


Tales from Yfibhor

by teal_blue



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Death of a character (none of the boys), If you squint your eyes hard enough you can see Hyunsung in the distance, M/M, Magical Realism, Mentions of war/civil war, Mild sexual content (not explicit) in later chapters, Sometimes they get drunk lol, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27123514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teal_blue/pseuds/teal_blue
Summary: A story of resilience, friendship and acceptance, of magic and love.Set in Yfibhor, a small village up in the hills in the north of Afjár, immersed in mist almost all year round, a piece of land seemingly floating in the air.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 41
Kudos: 70





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
>  I don’t really know what to say about myself, lol. I used to publish my stories here on AO3 and then I stopped and deleted my old account because, well, I’m volatile. I'm a bit nervous about posting again, but I'm also very, very excited!  
>  I got the idea of writing this story in July, while I was playing The Sims 4 – Realm of Magic. This story has been my safe place for the past three months, and I hope it can become your safe place as well. It is unbetaed, so please bear with me! 
> 
> I’d really like to thank my cousin, who doesn’t know much about the story, yet has waited patiently for me to finish it, supporting me a lot throughout these months ♡  
>  And to you, who chose to read this story, thank you a whole lot ♡
> 
> ☾✩☽
> 
> Definitions:  
>  _Odhrir_ : used by males to address an older male they respect/are close to.  
>  _Nir_ : used by males to address an older woman they respect/are close to.  
>  _Juju_ : “grandma” in Alchemists’ mother tongue.  
>  _Hez_ : Yfibhor’s currency.
> 
> Update schedule:  
>  1st chapter: October, 29  
>  2nd chapter: November, 3  
>  3rd chapter: November, 8  
>  4th chapter: November, 13  
>  5th chapter: November, 18
> 
> Tags will be updated with every new chapter!

Yfibhor had been home to powerful castes of mages for almost two centuries. Just a small village of ancient origins, up in the hills in the far north of Afjár, it was immersed in mist almost all year round, and looked like a piece of land eerily floating in the air.

Minho had been living in Yfibhor his whole life. Despite being still rather young, he had seen his village go through both a war and a civil war, almost lay down in ruins and then get back on its feet again. At the beginning of his adulthood, life had finally slowed down: even if the village was led by Untamed spellcasters, the cast of mages that, much to many other villagers’ discontent, had prevailed at the end of the civil war, life in the village was rather peaceful. The newer generations were growing up determined not to make their ancestors’ same mistakes, to treat their village and each other better than what had been done before, regardless of magical differences and past mistakes. It had been hard, for Minho, trying to get over resentment but, just like many others, as he grew up he had privileged tranquility over hatred, and a life based on honest work over a life based on hostility-seeking deeds. Seeking a revolution was simply not an option, not anymore.

“What does this mean?” Jeongin asked out of the blue, breaking the silence that had filled the room until then. Minho did not lift his eyes from his book, for he knew Jeongin’s question was directed to Seungmin. In fact, he soon heard him shift on his on chair as he moved closer to Jeongin.

They had spent the entire afternoon together in Seungmin’s room, sitting around the large, wooden table placed at the foot of his bed. It had been a quiet day, and neither of them had been too busy with respective daily duties, so they had just resorted to spending the afternoon at Seungmin’s, sheltered from the cold and in each other’s company.

“Let me see,” Seungmin said, and as soon as he read the sentence Jeongin was showing him on his book, he scoffed. “Well, you should know what this means. You’ve studied it last week.”

“Why should I know Practical spellcasters’ language if hardly anybody still speaks it, here in Yfibhor? I don’t understand how this relates to my magical training.”

“Cultures build themselves around languages,” Seungmin said plainly, dismissing Jeongin’s complaints. “Every mage should know their kin’s mother tongue, no matter how out of use it has fallen.”

“Leave the poor Jeongin be,” Minho chimed in, eventually lifting his eyes from his book and looking straight at Seungmin with a grin on his face.

“Not you too…” Seungmin said tiredly, hardly sparing Minho a glance, and as he shook his head and went back to his book of spells, Minho turned his head towards Jeongin and winked at him, making him laugh. “And get your feet off the table, please.”

Minho scoffed but complied right away, and sat straight on his chair. He looked sideways at Jeongin and saw him completely distracted, moving his head from side to side, trying to figure out a way not to go back studying.

“ _Odhrir_ , do you know your native language?” he in fact asked Minho not soon after, making him grin.

“I do. The books from which I have learned everything that concerns my type of magic are all written in my native language.”

“Alchemists are very secretive about their own knowledge,” Seungmin explained to Jeongin, and Minho simply nodded. “They have always handed it down over generations through books written in their mother tongue, which is very hard to learn for mages belonging to other magical types. Almost impossible, I would say.”

Jeongin seemed quite impressed, and Minho just smiled at him as his thoughts went to his family’s tomes about herbs and roots, minerals and potions. Neither his father, who had died during the war when Minho was only a child, nor his mother had ever taught him his kin’s language. Even though his mother had lived a little bit longer than his father, and had passed away some years after him, during the civil war, she had never really acquired her kin’s knowledge, being the only non-holder born in a family of Alchemists. So Minho had learned everything he knew from his grandmother, rumored to be one of the most powerful mages still alive, and from the books she had wisely handed down to him. Dusty and worn out, their pages contained a knowledge obscure to most, deciphered by righteous Alchemists through decades of intricate conversations with the Earth and her creations.

Lost in his own thoughts, Minho looked outside the window and only then noticed it was time for him to go: a black sky had swallowed the colors of the sunset, and night was already creeping in. Winter really was coming.

 _“Odhrir_ … can you tell me the story of your grandmother and the other sages?” Jeongin asked right in that moment, as though he had been reading into Minho’s mind, and Minho just looked at him dearly, before standing up and tucking his book in his haversack.

“Another time, Jeongin. I really have to go home, now,” he said, and both Seungmin and Jeongin glanced outside the window, as though neither of them had noticed it already was that late. Minho threw his long shawl on his shoulders and then leaned in to ruffle Jeongin’s hair. “Go back studying and don’t make Seungmin angry.”

Jeongin looked quite disappointed, but he just nodded, knowing it was just no use to throw a tantrum. Minho waved at Seungmin and, without waiting for him to wave back, he flew out the door, headed downstairs. As he arrived on the first floor, Seungmin’s father, who was bent over the fireplace stirring something in a large copper pot, turned his head to look at him and smiled. A sweet smell of vegetables and meat filled the air, and as Minho inhaled it deeply, it made him feel all warm inside.

“Minho. I thought you were staying over for dinner,” Seungmin’s father said as he straightened up and came closer to Minho to shake his hand.

“I would really like to, but grandmother is waiting for me at home.”

“Then I won’t keep you. Give her my regards, will you?”

Minho nodded and smiled at him. As he let go of his hand, he bowed to him and then headed to the door.

The air of the night was cold and misty, and Minho made himself small in his shawl. The alleys were already almost empty, since everyone had already come back home, and only those who used to work until late in the evening could be seen in one corner or the other. Minho walked at a steady pace, with his head down and his haversack pressed close to his side, and he soon reached the grove of fir trees that, right outside the center of the village, preluded the last part of his way home. The ground soon started to slope upwards, making it harder for him to pick up his pace, but he did not mind. He breathed in the smell of the trees, deeply, and the thought of how beautiful everything was, in autumn, made his heart tremble, and he felt serene.

He soon emerged from the trees, and ran the remaining distance to his house. The sky had opened up the slightest bit, and a beautiful, fine dust of stars could be seen through the clouds.

 _“Juju_ , I’m home,” Minho said as he stepped inside and, as he closed the door, he saw his grandmother already sitting at the dining table, the cats sleeping at her feet and the table already set.

Minho took off his shawl, came closer to her and gently caressed her hair. It always amazed him, the way she was still capable of doing simple house chores despite her physical condition. He looked at her lengthily, his mind still wandering somewhere between the memories of his parents and the conversation about languages he had had with his friends, until he just blinked repeatedly and emptied his haversack at once.

“I’ve bought a lot of fresh vegetables, those we’re not able to grow here,” he said as he wore his apron and started to prepare everything he needed to cook a stew. His grandmother, despite not being able to see him, followed his movements with her head, a beaming expression all over her face.

As he chopped the vegetables, he told her everything about the afternoon he had spent with his friends, and made her laugh as he imitated Seungmin scolding Jeongin for not studying enough. He poured everything in a pot and put it on the fire, and a hearty smell soon filled the room, making the cats wake up and gather around him, meowing sluggishly and trying to get his attention. When he could not ignore them any longer, he kissed each of them on the nose, and gave them something to eat. He then waited for the stew to finish cooking, immersed in his own thoughts again, and when everything was ready, he filled two bowls and sat at the table. As he placed one bowl in front of his grandmother, her expression changed and that made him smile. He watched her as she slowly grabbed the spoon on her right, immersed it in the stew and brought it to her mouth, nothing more than contentedness on her face.

“Is it good?” Minho asked her, his spoon still untouched near his bowl, and laughed as he saw her eyes disappear behind her eyelids as she smiled and nodded. He leaned in and cleaned her chin with his napkin smiling to himself, feeling happy. “Eat well.”

🌱

The weather in Yfibhor was becoming harsher as November came around. The days had started to shorten, the sky was grayer and paler. In every corner of the village, the air smelled of the smoke blowing out of the chimneys, and everything was always swallowed by the thick, damp mist Yfibhor was well known for. By that time of the year, the trees surrounding the stone walls and the little houses around the center of the village seemed to always be sound asleep, and their heavy breaths were the only thing that suggested life had not stopped completely in that corner of the world.

That day, the sun had already begun to set when Minho emerged from the back of his house with his arms full of branches and logs. As he came closer to the main entrance, he unexpectedly saw a man knocking on the front door. He looked at his face with curiosity, at his fair hair tucked behind his ears and his long earrings almost reaching the clavicles hidden under his cloak, but froze on the spot when he recognized him as one of the Untamed spellcasters of Yfibhor. Already too close to try to head back and momentarily hide in the shed he was coming from, Minho just stayed still, trying not to make a sound. But the spellcaster, aware of his presence, suddenly turned to look straight at him. He almost made him drop all of the logs he was holding tight to his chest with that simple, weary glance. Yet, much to Minho’s dismay, the spellcaster politely smiled at him.

“So you must be the young Alchemist every old lady always rants about.”

Minho, startled by the man’s voice, couldn’t do anything but nod. He slowly started walking again, his steps light and uncertain, and the spellcaster slightly budged to let him open the door. He also outstretched his arms, offering his help to bring the logs inside, but Minho dismissed the offer with a blunt gesture.

When he stepped inside, he briefly glanced at his grandmother: she was sitting on her rocking chair by the fireplace, a wool blanket on her legs and her hair, which he had gently braided in the morning, falling on one of her shoulders. Minho knew she understood a stranger had just walked through their door, and did not dare to tell her anything, as if he didn’t want to bring her to the man’s attention. He was not sure why he was feeling nervous, but having an Untamed spellcaster coming inside their house surely was not something he had been looking for. He glanced at his grandmother one last time before dropping all of the logs on the floor, against the little stove. He then turned his back at his _juju_ , a silent pledge to protect her, and looked intently at the spellcaster, who had been mindlessly looking around the little room from the spot he had been standing on since he had closed the door. He took off his cloak, the heavy phoenix-shaped brooch attached to it shining sinisterly, and gently folded it around his left arm. He then finally looked right back at Minho, as if the thought that he was right there in front of him had suddenly come to his mind.

“How rude of me, coming in without even introducing myself…” the spellcaster began, a hint of confidence in his voice that brought Minho to interrupt him without really minding his manners.

“I know who you are.”

The spellcaster furrowed his brow, taken aback. The other was looking at him with his jaw slightly clenched, and an almost imperceptible glint in his eyes he did not know how to decipher.

“Do you?”

“You are the descendant of one of the most powerful families of Untamed spellcasters. Your name is Chan,” the spellcaster looked genuinely surprised, his eyes imperceptibly wider and his mouth slightly open, but he quickly regained his composure. “And your reputation precedes you.”

“Yours does too. Your magic is known for coming straight from the deepest core of our Earth.”

“Every Alchemist walking through this life has received their calling from our Mother Earth herself,” Minho said plainly, as if he was reciting a script by heart. The coldness in his voice could hardly go unnoticed, but the spellcaster smiled politely nonetheless.

“Yet I’ve come to know you are gifted with a talent not every Alchemist can vaunt. They say you were born as a gift to this world, a gift coming from the Deities’ holy hands.”

Minho was not sure how he was supposed to react to those praises, nor what the real intentions the spellcaster was hiding underneath them were. He was not sure he was ready to find out. He heard the peaceful, steady sounds coming from his grandmother’s rocking chair behind him and suddenly felt calmer, yet braver.

“Not to sound rude, but what is it that you want from me, exactly?”

“Potions,” the spellcaster just said, and Minho could not help but sneer. Of course he wanted potions.

“And what makes you believe I will help you?”

“One of our units, the one I’m in charge of, will be sent to one of the near citadels to carry out negotiations our village will greatly benefit from. We thought we could use some help.”

“This still does not answer my question.”

Chan remained silent and then slowly pointed at the old woman sitting behind Minho. “Her actions still live through the villagers’ tales. The good she has done for Yfibhor is handed down from one generation to another.”

Minho quickly glanced in the direction the spellcaster was looking at, but stopped his head midway to stare at the darkness coming from outside the window: it was swallowing the room’s shadows as the cold night slowly crept in, the dim lights of the candles barely enough to illuminate his unwanted guest’s face.

“A lot of things have changed from those days, don’t you reckon?” and Minho went back to looking straight into the spellcaster’s eyes. They were dark, incredibly dark, and seemed to hold in too many thoughts, too many secrets, too much sorrow. He felt uneasy.

“Indeed. And yet, the village still remains ours to protect. A different caste might have taken the lead, but this, my friend, this will never change.”

Minho sighed, and Chan knew he had convinced him the slightest bit as soon as he saw the skin on his forehead somewhat relax.

“Which potions do you need?” Minho finally said as he moved towards one of the nearest wall mounted working tables. He grabbed a twig pencil and an old, worn-out parchment, that he quickly unrolled, and then stayed still, waiting for the answer.

“We need the _Magaur_ potion, and the _Plenee_ one. For four people.”

“It will take me two days to hoard the ingredients and prepare everything,” Minho said while scribbling something on his parchment. He then stopped and turned to face the spellcaster again, the pencil’s charcoal point staining the crinkled paper it was still slightly brushing. “What do you need the _Magaur_ potion for?”

“We need to be able to discern mages from non-holders, in case something goes wrong,” Chan explained almost casually, almost flatly. “We try not to hurt civilians.”

Minho imperceptibly stiffened. He turned to his working table again to hide his face from the other, yet could not help but snort.

“Sounds new to me,” he said through his teeth, while mindlessly scribbling something else on the paper.

Again, Chan said nothing and only smiled politely. He then wore his cloak in a sharp movement that cut through the silence and that almost made Minho flinch. He tied it securely to his neck and then headed to the front door. He stopped on the doorway, his hand already clasped around the doorknob as he looked back and smiled politely yet another time.

“You will be handsomely compensated,” he said briefly, pointing at both Minho and his grandmother. Minho frowned.

“We don’t need any money. Mother Earth already provides us with all that we might need,” he retorted, a hint of disdain coming straight from his guts. The spellcaster let out something that was roughly definable as a laugh and finally opened the door. A freezing gale rushed in, almost blowing out all of the candles scattered around the room.

“Legend has it the Lees are not only incredibly gifted, but particularly proud as well. I will be back in two days, then. In the early afternoon,” he said plainly, and then disappeared in the night without sparing another glance at the room, nor at Minho. He soon was swallowed by the freezing wind and Yfibhor’s harsh weather as the door closed behind him.

As soon as he was sure the spellcaster was definitely gone, Minho let out a breath he did not know he was holding in and finally turned to look at his grandmother. She was sitting still, as she always was, her eyes a glistening white and a calm expression beaming all over her face. The rocker she was sitting on was slightly swinging back and forth.

“ _Juju_ , am I not seeing something I should be seeing?”

She remained silent, as she always did, as Minho came closer to her, dropped on the floor at her feet and abandoned his head in her womb. He closed his eyes when he felt her hand gently brush his hair, a touch so delicate every little worry slipped away from his weary mind in the bat of an eye.

🌱

Two days passed by and, as anticipated, the spellcaster came back. Minho had left the glass vials neatly placed in a wicker basket right in front of the entrance door. He spied on the man’s every move hiding behind the curtains of his bedroom window. As he expected and hoped, the spellcaster immediately noticed the basket and, after making sure it contained everything he needed, he briefly looked around before turning back and retracing his steps. Minho exhaled deeply and moved away from the window only when he was not able to tell the spellcaster’s silhouette apart from those of the trees anymore.

He ran down the stairs and quickly grabbed the other two baskets he had prepared the night before with one hand, and his winter shawl with the other. He rushed towards his grandmother, who was knitting by the fire with the cats curled up at her feet, and gave her a little peck on the top of her head.

“ _Juju,_ it’s market day, today. I will be back in a few hours.”

And he flew out the door, a strong wind making his cheeks instantly flush, headed to the village center.

*

“So he just asked for those potions?” Seungmin asked.

Minho nodded absent-mindedly. They were lazily walking down the main road of the village, stopping by the stalls that sold the supplies they could have needed in the months to come. While Seungmin tended to pay with money, Minho was usually asked by the hawkers to trade his potions for their goods. They typically looked for health related potions, which were fairly easy to make, and seasonal street markets were the only places where he could find herbs, oils and minerals he wouldn’t have been able to get hold of otherwise, therefore he did not mind.

He had told Seungmin all about his encounter with the Untamed spellcaster, and he had listened intently, as he always did. A few steps behind, Jeongin was cheerfully wobbling from one stall to another, his pretty eyes wandering from place to place and his basket full of flasks and jars.

“Well, at least he asked for potions that are rather harmless, didn’t he?” Seungmin offered, and the other nodded once again. “Then you can be sure he is not going to use them for anything shady.”

“Your rationality is honestly infuriating,” Minho scoffed.

“Moreover,” Seungmin added as though Minho hadn’t said anything, a wide grin on his face, “I’ve heard the high-ranking units of Untamed spellcasters are doing a fairly decent job at managing the relationships with the neighboring citadels and villages.”

Minho sonorously snorted but, despite his well-known aversion for Untamed spellcasters, he carefully pondered over his friend’s words. Yfibhor was actually living through a fairly prosperous time: the civil war seemed to be nothing but a bad dream from a very distant past, and the relationships with other villages were mostly non-conflicting, making it possible for the people of Yfibhor to live in peace. As much as he did not want to acknowledge it, Minho had to admit the Untamed spellcasters in charge were actually doing a good job at dealing with both domestic and foreign policy matters.

They walked in silence for quite some time, the villagers’ voices ringing in their ears and the mixed scents of fruits, incents and herbs filling their noses and making Minho feel merely content.

“Do you trust them?” he finally asked Seungmin. He saw him shrug from the corner of his eye.

“I honestly don’t know, _odhrir_. I cannot say I trust them, but neither can I say I distrust them just because they are Untamed spellcasters. There might have been some issues between them and my people, issues that mainly remain unresolved, but I often find myself trusting their new generations. I can just sense they are up to something good, if you know what I mean. Maybe they will be able to make up for their fathers’ mistakes, don’t you reckon?”

Seungmin was a Practical spellcaster. His magic was deeply rooted in the living Earth, just like Minho’s own magic was, and it was mainly aimed at helping with practical matters of everyday life, and that was the reason why Seungmin’s father always said that each and every Practical spellcaster had all the qualities that made the perfect husband, or the perfect wife. It was also one of the reasons why Practical and Untamed spellcasters greatly differed from each other – the first holding, in their magic, all the good and safety Mother Earth herself carried within her womb, the latter living off the erratic and disruptive force of Fire.

“Let me correct myself: it is not your rationality that infuriates me… it is you.”

Seungmin laughed at that, and Minho could not help but laugh as well, a high-pitched grunt coming out of his nose. A stall then caught his attention, and he briefly excused himself to stop by and trade one of his potions for some roots. When he came back, he found Seungmin waiting for Jeongin to buy a copper trinket box, with the basket the younger had been carrying around all afternoon now hanging from his arm. Minho looked at them both with tenderness filling his heart.

“How is Jeongin’s training going?”

Just like Seungmin, Jeongin was a Practical spellcaster as well. Much to his parents' surprise, he was a mage born in a family of non-holders, something not all spellcasters looked upon favorably, yet something the remaining old sages of Yfibhor conceived as the ultimate reification of the Gods’ will. Mages born in families of non-holders were usually assigned to mages belonging to the same magical type, in order for them to be properly trained and formed, and Seungmin’s family had been in charge of Jeongin’s education since he had showed the first signs of carrying magical abilities.

“Not bad at all. He surely is a fast learner. Him being mighty positive helps as well.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Minho said, and he really was.

As Jeongin was coming back to them, all smiles for his new purchase, he accidentally bumped into a child, making her drop a bunch of marbles she was holding in her tiny fists. As they watched him apologize profusely, Minho just laughed out loud, while Seungmin could do nothing more than let out a heavy sigh.

“Why is he always so clumsy?” he muttered, exasperated.

They strolled around the village’s narrow streets until the hawkers gradually began to pack the unsold goods to head back home. They said their goodbyes when the sky was starting to turn dark, navy blue filling the clouds. Minho walked all the way home feeling somewhat lighter, his baskets filled with all of those little things that made him happy. As soon as he came home, he found his grandmother already asleep on her rocking chair, the scarf she had been knitting abandoned on the floor, the cats nowhere to be seen. He smiled gently as he laid a little bouquet of wildflowers on her legs.

🌱

The end of November came around with its quiet mornings and its infinite skies.

Minho woke up before the sun began to rise, as he usually did. He wrapped himself up his warmest shawl and silently went downstairs, careful not to wake his grandmother up. He lighted the fire in the fireplace, so that the house would have been warmer by midmorning, before sitting at the dining table, grabbing an apple from the fruit basket and eating it in small bites, his eyes puffy and his thoughts fuzzy. As soon as the sky began to turn a pale shade of lilac blue, he stood up and grabbed a bunch of small burlap sacks full of seeds from underneath one of his working tables, his wooden mortar and pestle and went outside to sit on the stool near the front door. The air of the early morning was thin and misty, and he breathed it in in long, steady breaths.

He had just begun to grind a bunch of linen seeds when someone emerged from the grove of fir trees. He felt his heart skip a beat when he realized he was looking at the Untamed spellcaster slowly coming closer and looking back at him with a surprised look on his face.

“I was not expecting to find you awake,” Chan said as he stopped right in front of him. Minho could not help but stare back at him, unable to hide his disbelief, holding the little pestle tight in his left hand.

“Not particularly keen on sleeping in,” he muttered absent-mindedly, his voice hoarse and low, almost nothing more than a whisper.

“Funny to think that I usually do sleep in,” the spellcaster stated with a smile, and before Minho could say anything else, he fumbled with his haversack and pulled something out of it. “I actually just wanted to come here and leave this by your front door.”

Minho glared at the small box the other was handing him with his eyes full of something Chan could not really decipher. Annoyance and a tiny bit of astonishment, perhaps.

“I told you we do not need any money,” he almost hissed, defensively.

“It’s not money,” the spellcaster quickly explained, his head bowing imperceptibly. “It’s a present. Something to properly thank you for the help you have given us.”

Minho did not move. He skeptically searched for something on the other’s face, something that could tell him he was being insincere. But the eyes that were looking back at him were clear and honest, and Minho finally gave in when Chan cautiously added: “I kindly ask you to accept this.”

His tone was not merely polite: it was kind, and it was gentle, and maybe that was what left Minho with a feeling of bewilderment filling his stomach, eyes suddenly full of wonder.

“You should not have bothered,” he only managed to say.

He stretched out his arm to reach for the box and, as soon as he grabbed it, he brushed the spellcaster’s fingers and unexpectedly felt a throbbing quiver penetrate his bones. It seemed like the other had felt it too, since he quickly withdrew his hand and hid it under his cloak. Minho still managed to see his whole arm tremble, and so he understood.

“Someone casted a spell on you, am I right?” he asked flatly, and Chan just sneered.

“You truly are a powerful mage,” he commented, taken aback by the fact that Minho had noticed just from a single touch alone. He sighed heavily. “I reckon someone in Fráhar was not happy about our villages negotiating.”

“And what are you planning on doing about it?”

“Just rest and wait for it to go away, I guess.”

Minho stared at him lengthily, his mortar and pestle long forgotten on the ground, the little box in his hand making his fingers itch. The expression on his face told Chan he was pondering over something. Eventually, Minho stood up slowly, put the small box in one of his pockets and then turned to face the front door.

“Follow me,” he finally said as he got back inside.

And so Chan did. Minho asked him to leave his cloak and haversack on one of the chairs at the dining table, and then led the way to a staircase Chan had not noticed the last time he was there. It led to a wide basement, its wall shelves full of books, plants, boxes, jars and flasks, trinkets. Despite the great variety of things stored on the shelves and filling up the vault, everything looked quite neat and tidy, and Chan could not help but feel amazed. Minho quickly lighted up a couple of lanterns and then asked him to sit on a stool across the cellar, and Chan complied. He watched Minho grab a handful of roots off the top of a shelf, a jar filled with a dark, thick fluid off another one, and he watched him bring everything on the table in the center of the vault. Minho mixed the ingredients in a small cast iron cauldron placed on an old portable stove and, as soon as he began to mutter something under his breath, a sparkling, ebony steam started to come out from the cauldron. Chan stared in awe, and felt his muscles relax when a subtle smell of moss gradually filled the air. All of a sudden, he felt drowsy and somewhat content.

“You don’t like me, do you?” he suddenly asked, his voice mellow and low, once Minho had stopped mumbling.

Minho looked up from the cauldron to briefly glance at Chan and he saw, on his face and all over his body, the effects his own magic gave non-Alchemists when they were around while he was brewing potions: half-closed eyes, heavy legs and arms, feebleness, sleepiness.

“I actually do not like a lot of people,” he said as he looked down once more. “Therefore, you can stop worrying about that and, perhaps, get over yourself.”

He didn’t dare to look up from his small cauldron, but he then heard the other laugh meekly, and felt his own shoulders relax. It was not really common for other people to accept his sharp-tongued remarks that easily, but Chan seemed to take them in with a light heart.

“Is negotiating with other villages hard?” Minho asked. Something like a peace offering.

“Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not,” Chan said vaguely. He actually looked on the verge of falling asleep. “And some other times you just get jinxed in the meantime without even noticing.”

Minho found himself smiling at that. They remained in silence until the potion was ready and Minho carefully poured it in a flat-bottom vial. As soon as he closed its lid and the potion’s fumes dispersed, Chan started to feel more awake. He looked confused when Minho closed the distance between them, as if he hadn’t really noticed he had finished brewing the potion, and put the vial in his hands.

“There you go. You just need to take a spoonful in the morning, and one in the evening. For three days.”

“I really cannot thank you enough,” Chan said, gratefulness making his tired eyes sparkle, his expression innocent and pure.

Minho led the way up the stairs and reached the upstairs room before Chan, who was still kind of slowed down, his steps sluggish and heavy. As soon as Minho grabbed Chan’s cloak, the phoenix-shaped brooch caught his attention and he suddenly knew what he had to do. He unpinned it fast and put it in his pocket, just in time for him to hand the cloak and the haversack to their owner without him noticing.

Chan thanked him again profusely, and then went away with the first light of day. Minho pulled out the small box and the brooch from his pocket and closely looked at them both.

He needed to see Hyunjin.

*

“Well, well, well, look who’s back.”

Minho started coughing as soon as he set foot in Hyunjin’s small stone house, the scent of incents and burnt smudge sticks too strong for his own liking.

He had to walk deep into the beech-maple forest right outside the village borders to reach the house, and his shawl had dampened because of the morning dew. Hyunjin’s house stood in the middle of a small clearing, and the path that lead to it always made Minho feel like he was entering the prelude to a dream. It seemed like, over time, the space surrounding Hyunjin’s house had slowly reacted and adjusted to his magic: the light shining through the trees was always silvery and bluish, and the vegetation’s colors always showed beautiful shades of cyan and teal blue.

It seemed like Hyunjin had been waiting for him: when Minho had emerged from the forest, he had seen the front door wide open, and once he had stepped inside he had seen Hyunjin already sitting at his round divination table, casually reading some tarot cards.

“Not that I hadn’t seen you coming, obviously,” Hyunjin confirmed as Minho sat in front of him, only the little table separating them. Hyunjin finally lifted his head and looked straight into Minho’s eyes. “Welcome back, _odhrir_.”

Minho smiled at him. He had drawn a little dot on his forehead with the juice of a wild berry, as he usually did when he needed his energy to focus on his third eye. His hair was beautifully long and his eyes, innocent but sharp, were imperceptibly becoming a light shade of cerulean blue, a sign that he was already in contact with something, or someone, from another dimension. Despite all of those stinging smells that always filled the air around him, being in Hyunjin’s presence was somewhat calming, and Minho found himself loosen up quite easily. He took off his shawl and placed it on his knees.

“Have I interrupted something?” he asked pointing at the cards spread on the table. Hyunjin shook his head.

“No, I was just filling the time waiting for you to arrive. So…” he said, the cards forgotten on the table, and he gracefully took one of Minho’s hands in both of his. “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

“I need your help,” Minho admitted and Hyunjin let out a quiet snicker.

“Who would have guessed!” he said, but he became serious soon after he had turned Minho’s palm, so that it was facing the ceiling. He lightly touched it with his index finger, a touch so gentle Minho felt shivers run through his whole body. Hyunjin’s eyes almost turned white for a split second.

“Ah, so you’ve met someone,” he began, his index finger moving in slow circles. “And they seem trustworthy but you cannot bring yourself to trust them. A man. An Untamed spellcaster?” he asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and Minho simply nodded. “I see. Quite powerful as well. And… ah, now this is pretty fascinating.”

“What?” Minho urged. Hyunjin traced one last circle on his palm before squeezing his hand and gently putting it back on the table. Minho could still feel the slight vibrations coming from his slender finger on his skin.

“It seems like he has taken some kind of interest in you,” Hyunjin explained much to Minho’s surprise, his voice soft and low.

Minho stared at his own hand, as if it could tell him anything at all, but to him it was nothing more than a piece of flesh and bones. No third eye visions, nor otherworldly clues. Hyunjin looked at Minho with his head tilted, a strand of hair falling on his face. His eyes were as clear as the surface of a river on a sunny day.

“You know how all of this works. You did not come here empty-handed, did you?” he suddenly said and Minho shook his head. He knew Hyunjin needed objects for his clairvoyance to be more effective. For him to _really see_ , as Hyunjin himself would have said. So he took the box and the brooch out of his pocket and neatly placed them on the table, waiting for the other to say something. He saw Hyunjin’s eyes sparkle as his fingers brushed against the two objects.

“I like the energy they radiate,” he whispered to himself. He then closed his eyes and moved his neck slightly, as if he was listening to something in his head. He opened his eyelids again and pointed at the brooch. “This is his, someone important gave it to him. It’s a family heirloom, a pretty important one as well. And this…”

Hyunjin took the small box in his hands and looked at it intently. He then glanced at Minho.

“A gift?” he suggested, curious, and Minho nodded.

“I helped him with something and I told him I did not want money in return, so this morning he came over and gave me this. It’s a moldavite pendant,” he explained as Hyunjin opened the box.

“Interesting. Very, very interesting. Moldavite helps Earth mages heal when they feel strained from using their magic too much, am I right?” Hyunjin asked, and he looked at the pendant again without waiting for a reply. A little smile appeared on his lips as he closed the box and put it back on the table. “And apparently he knows this as well.”

He then stood up and disappeared beyond the beaded door curtain Minho knew led to a back room. He reemerged from it with a wooden board in his hands, and he placed it on the table after setting the tarot cards aside. Minho looked at the board while Hyunjin gathered the little crystals and pebbles scattered on the table. It was engraved with golden symbols he did not know the meaning of, something reminding him of trickles and waves and jets of water. After all, everything concerning Hyunjin’s magic, in all of its elegance, stemmed from the intricate spirals of Water.

Hyunjin took the small stones in his hands and shook them a little while whispering something with his eyes closed. He then gently threw them on the board and took some time to carefully look at where each crystal and pebble had landed.

“His heart is in the right place, _odhrir_. I see no evil within him,” Hyunjin’s voice was soothing and reassuring. “What I do see, instead, is a conflict… between him and the legacy that has been handed down to him, perhaps? He surely is struggling with something. Yet, his strong will shall prevail, I can see this clearly. His mind is so strong. I see great things ahead of him, and none of them will be accomplished through wickedness. And this…” Hyunjin suddenly stopped, eyebrows slightly raised due to surprise, a confused look on his face.

“What?” Minho urged. “What do you see?”

“This green pebble,” Hyunjin began slowly, pointing at the little stone that had landed on the top right corner of the board. “I chose it to represent you. And it landed on the section of the board that represents his spiritual calling.”

If Hyunjin looked somewhat confused, Minho, on the other hand, was completely oblivious to what was going on. He glanced down, but all his eyes were able to see were colored stones and pebbles on a wooden board.

“I really do not know what you are trying to tell me,” Hyunjin whispered, and Minho knew from the movements of his eyes – rapid, uncontrolled, involuntary – that he was not talking to him.

And then, all at once, Hyunjin’s eyes stopped and widened, as if he had finally wrapped his mind around something. He suddenly gathered all of his tarot cards in sharp movements, and he started to shuffle them, hastily. All of a sudden, his eyes were continuously changing color, looking like rolling marbles and making it difficult for Minho to look at them without feeling dizzy.

“Pick one,” Hyunjin finally said as he laid the cards on the table, face down. Minho pointed at the first card that caught his attention, completely lost, and Hyunjin grabbed it impatiently.

As soon as his eyes landed on the figure, his pupils dilated and his irises became a deep, vibrant shade of sky-blue. No more uncontrolled twitches, as if something had eventually aligned itself in his mind. Something in his expression shifted and his face looked calm and serene. He glanced at Minho as he finally turned the card to make him see it as well.

The only thing Minho could clearly decipher was the writing on the bottom of the card, and he felt his heart leap in his throat.


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Here’s the second chapter, in which Chan leaves Minho confused in a lot of different ways and some important things start to happen~  
>  Thank you to everyone who has already shown love to this story, I’ve sincerely appreciated the kudos and each and every comment ♡
> 
> ☾✩☽
> 
> Definitions:  
>  _Odhrir_ : used by males to address an older male they respect/are close to.  
>  _Nir_ : used by males to address an older woman they respect/are close to.  
>  _Juju_ : “grandma” in Alchemists’ mother tongue.  
>  _Hez_ : Yfibhor’s currency.
> 
> Update schedule:  
>  3rd chapter: November, 8  
>  4th chapter: November, 13  
>  5th chapter: November, 18  
>  (I forgot to specify this, but this schedule considers the time zone in Italy. I will always try to post the new chapters between 3pm and 7pm!)
> 
> Tags will be updated with every new chapter!

Minho was walking fast down the alley, his hooded cloak soaking wet, trying to make himself as small as possible against the stone walls. December had come around like a dark omen, bringing days and days of dull skies and pouring rain. He breathed a sigh of relief as he walked around a corner and finally saw the familiar light coming from inside the inn. He picked up his pace and held the bundle he was carrying with him tighter to his chest, the sound of clinking jars disappearing in the rain.

He stepped inside and the shivers he had felt running through his body all the way to the inn disappeared as he closed the heavy wooden door. A big fire was lazily crackling in the fireplace and the place was filled with the voices and the laughters of villagers and travelers who had found shelter there.

“Minho,” the innkeeper smiled at him as he came closer to the wooden counter. “You came.”

“Of course. I couldn’t leave you without the supplies you needed.”

He gently placed the bundle on the counter and untied the ribbon so that he could show the innkeeper the jars. She quickly glanced at them and smiled again as she collected them all, one by one, under the countertop.

“Thank you, dear, you’re a sweetheart. Is your grandmother doing good?”

“Luckily, she is.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” she said. She outstretched her arms and made a sign for him to take off his cloak. “Let me take your cloak and put it near the fire for you. It’s soaking wet.”

Minho gladly complied and watched her gently unfold his cloak on a chair near the fireplace. She then came back to her working spot and poured a clear, glistening liquid in a large inlaid cup. Minho smelled something like aniseed and a strong, pungent scent he could not quite associate to anything he had drunk before.

“There you go, it’s on the house. Go rest a little bit before heading back home.”

He took the cup with both of his hands and briefly thanked her before turning around to look for a table to sit at. Despite it being packed, the atmosphere inside the inn was rather peaceful. Minho had always liked the way, with the coming of winter, everything in Yfibhor became slow-paced, even more than usual, and everyone seemed to behave like they always were in a dreamlike state.

He was slowly making his way through the tables when someone softly pulled his tunic. He turned his head and he could not help but let out a gasp of surprise. Chan was waving at him, a big silver tankard in his other hand, his eyes nice and friendly.

“Sorry, I did not mean to startle you. I saw you coming in and I thought I’d come and say hello.”

Minho stared at him, a little lost. He had tried not to think about him since the moment he had stepped outside Hyunjin’s house, when he had realized their encounter had left him with more questions than answers, as well as with an incent-induced headache. And there he was again, the Untamed spellcaster with nice manners and a welcoming smile, standing before him with nothing more than his seemingly good intentions.

“Are you meeting up with someone?” Chan asked, almost carefully, a little confused by the look on Minho’s face. Minho shook his head slowly, and so Chan pointed at a table behind his back. “Why don’t you come sit with us?”

Minho glanced at the table the other was pointing at and saw three persons laughing and chatting animatedly. They seemed a little tipsy, and it seemed like they were really enjoying each other’s company.

He did not quite know what had brought him to agree, but he ended up following Chan to the table and, as soon as they reached it, the other three guys immediately fell silent. They all looked at Minho with curious expressions on their faces, the ghost of smiles and laughters still lingering on their lips, until one of them glanced at Chan with his big, dark eyes.

“ _Odhrir_ , your friend is quite handsome,” he said with an innocent, lost smile on his face. His cheeks were round and puffy, and his voice sounded happy.

“I am not his friend,” Minho said quickly, as if he was in a rush to explain himself, and with that sentence alone he made all of them laugh out loud. Dumbfounded, he could do nothing more than smile, his eyes searching for something, not really knowing what to do with himself. And so he just grabbed a seat and abandoned his body on it.

“He is quite polite as well,” the one with sharp features commented with a sarcastic grin, earning another laugh from the others, and with that Minho knew he had been accepted in the group.

The two mages – whose names, he came to know, were Jisung and Changbin – undoubtedly were Untamed spellcasters as well: despite showing it in different, peculiar ways, the energy they seemed to radiate resembled Chan’s almost perfectly. Instead, Minho could not quite pinpoint what he felt coming from the boy named Felix, who was sitting beside him and had pretty laughing eyes. He looked innocent yet mischievous, and he carried himself with a kind of lightness Minho had always associated with the unpredictability of spring breezes. He must have been an Impish spellcaster.

He observed them all as they came back to talking and joking with each other, their voices joyful and their laughs sincere. Aside from Chan, they all seemed to be younger than him. He could feel Chan glance at him from time to time, as if he was monitoring his reactions, as if he was preoccupied with how he might have been feeling, sitting with a bunch of spellcasters he was not familiar with whatsoever. Minho tried not to give too much thought to it. He drank whatever was in his cup in small sips, remaining in silence. The drink was making his insides feel rather warm and cozy, and he reckoned that was enough for him to feel at ease.

“So, what do you do for a living?” Changbin suddenly asked Minho, his tone polite yet inquiring, making the others turn their attention to him once again.

Minho looked at him sideways, hiding half of his face behind his large cup and pondering over how much he was ready to share with those strangers. Chan already knew more than he would have liked him to, and perhaps that already was a little too much for him to bear.

“I reckon what I do on a daily basis classifies me as a botanist,” he finally said, cautiously, hoping he could get away with just that answer, but the others were still looking at him as if they expected him to add something. He imagined they might have thought he was a mage too as soon as they had seen him coming with Chan, so he took a long sip from his cup and then sighed heavily. “I am an Alchemist, as well. I brew potions, and so forth.”

“He’s actually the one who provided us with the potions last month,” Chan chimed in, and as soon as the words left his mouth, Felix’s eyes widened.

“You are the sage’s grandson? The Alchemist every old lady always rambles on about?”

“What’s about old ladies always talking about me?” Minho suddenly turned his head to look at Chan, reminded of what the other had told him the first time they had met.

Chan just laughed at his reaction, wholeheartedly, and Minho found himself chortling. He, just like his unlikely companions for the night, was indeed tipsy.

They drank and talked some more, Minho listening to the others and observing them for the most part. He studied their interactions with his head abandoned on one hand, his fingers lazily brushing the rim of his cup, and was suddenly left at a loss of words when he was able to pinpoint something he had been noticing since he had sat at the table, without really becoming conscious of it until that moment: those three mages he had just met all looked at Chan as if he held the stars in his eyes. As if they were infinitely grateful to him, as if they held him in the highest regard. Much to his own surprise, Minho found it truly endearing, and was not really able to get rid of that thought for the rest of the night.

When the inn started to empty out and Jisung dozed off on the table surface, his empty glass still in his hand, Minho got on his feet and announced he was heading back home. They tried to make him stay, but he briefly declined their invitation, slightly bowing repeatedly.

He had made a few steps towards the chair next to the fireplace, where his cloak had been left to dry out, when he felt his arm being caught hold of. For some reason, he just knew it was Chan again.

“I really don’t want to be a bother,” he said as soon as Minho swung around. He was whispering, as though he did not want anyone else to hear him. “But I reckon you have something that belongs to me.”

Minho felt his heart sink as his thoughts directly went to the brooch sitting in his drawer, and he knew Chan had understood he was right in thinking that Minho had taken it just by how his eyes darted away for a split second. But Chan was there smiling at him, no sign of annoyance nor anger on his face, and so Minho decided to offer him a half-truth.

“I did not mean to steal it, I just… borrowed it. Needed it for something.”

He slowly closed the distance between him and his cloak, Chan at his heels, and he soon fastened it under his chin. He turned to face Chan once again, and saw that his smile had not faltered the slightest bit.

“Hope you were not trying to hex me yourself,” Chan joked, and Minho could not help but smile back at him, feeling somewhat relieved.

“I promise I was not.”

“It’s no problem, I just ask you to kindly give it back to me. It actually is kind of important.”

“I know,” Minho said bashfully, the words Hyunjin had said to him vaguely floating in his mind. “I shall come over one of these days to return it.”

It took Minho some seconds to realize what he had just said. Chan looked back at him in surprise, but then smiled widely again, and it seemed to Minho that his smile had gotten somewhat brighter.

“I live in the small wooden house near the river’s mouth down south. It’s the only house among the fishing sites, so you can’t really miss it.”

And with that knowledge Minho went away, his light steps not making any sound in the damp night, leaving the inn and a certain feeling of beaming serenity behind his back.

🌱

It took more than one hour for Minho to reach Chan’s house on foot. It was a quiet day, and despite the sun had finally come out for the first time in December, the soil was still moist from all the rain that had constantly poured down in the previous days. Minho had to walk particularly carefully in order for his feet not to sink into some pieces of land.

As much as he did not want to admit it, he was feeling quite tense, and he still could not wrap his head around what had brought him to tell Chan he would have come over, instead of just telling him to drop by his place to take back his brooch. But there he was, finally seeing the small house in the distance, the brooch safe in his haversack, and he knew there was no turning back. The smell of the ocean was strong and pungent, and Minho inhaled it in deep breaths with each step, feeling its salty dampness fill up his lungs.

As he arrived near the house, the sight of its exteriors made him frown: they looked old and worn out, as if nobody was actually living there. As he stepped on the front porch stairs, he looked around carefully, as though he could find a sign he had nothing to worry about, but all he could hear were the seagulls cawing in the distance, and all he could see was a peaceful expanse of dark stones and pebbles. So he reached the door and knocked on it lightly, and then he waited. After almost a minute, in which Minho had convinced himself he had completely misunderstood Chan the night he had told him where he lived, the door finally cracked open, and all Minho was able to see was one of Chan’s eyes peeking at him through the crack.

“Minho…” he finally said, and he opened the door completely, squinting because of the bright light suddenly surrounding him whole.

His voice was low and hoarse and Minho, taken aback, could not help but stare at him: he was standing there barefoot, and was wearing nothing but a loose tunic and loose pants, his hair quite frizzy and his face drowsy. There were no traces of the subtle fierceness he always carried himself with. In that moment, he just looked vulnerable.

“Were you sleeping?” Minho finally asked once he noticed he had said nothing for maybe a little too long.

“Actually, I was not. Got up not long ago, however,” Chan said, slowly rubbing his eyes. He then stepped aside, hastily, as though he had just noticed Minho was still outside. “Please, come in.”

As soon as the door was closed behind him, Minho felt himself surrounded by different, subtle smells at once: burning wood, scented candles, vegetables. Despite the inside of the house did not look as worn out as its exteriors, the furniture was quite modest, and the way it was placed looked like not much thought had been put into its arrangement. But, as a whole, everything looked quite easy on the eye.

Minho turned to face Chan again, and he was looking at him with his hands on his hips and an awkward smile on his face, as though he did not really know what to do with himself. So Minho rummaged through the stuff in his haversack and pulled a small jute sack out.

“Your brooch,” he said and Chan’s eyes lit up, as though he had just understood why Minho was there in his house. He took the sack with both of his hands and tightened his hold around it, an involuntary movement that made Minho’s heart somewhat clench.

“Thank you,” he said in a small voice. He then looked at Minho straight in the eye again and pointed at a copper pot placed on the turned off stove. ”I was about to have breakfast, would you mind joining me? I don’t really like eating alone. Besides, you must have walked a long way to come here.”

Minho was slightly caught off guard by the offer, yet he nodded in agreement. He was, in fact, feeling both tired and hungry. Chan smiled at him, and as soon as he had carefully placed the sack in a small box, he swiftly set the table near the window and told Minho to take a seat on one of the two chairs. Minho complied and observed the little flowers embroidered on the tablecloth while waiting to be served, feeling more embarrassed than he would have liked to admit. Chan soon placed some slices of bread on the table, and then came back again with two steamy bowls of soup. Minho noticed Chan had served himself with less food, while the bowl destined to him was almost overflowing with broth and vegetables. Chan sat across from Minho, and before immersing his spoon in the soup he looked at him as if he had understood what he was thinking of.

“I ate a lot, yesterday evening,” he explained, and Minho just knew that was a lie.

He kind of had the impression that Chan wanted him to eat more not only because Minho was his guest, but also because he was younger than him – a knowledge they had both acquired during the night at the inn. Based on what Minho had been able to observe during that night, and mostly based on the interactions between Chan and his friends, he had understood Chan was naturally inclined to put those who were younger before himself.

“Are you living alone, here?” Minho asked after a few seconds of silence. He ate a spoonful of soup and was quite amazed at how good it tasted.

“Yes. Didn’t really like living with my father anymore,” Chan said casually, without giving any sign of wanting to elaborate further.

So Minho just nodded and they continued to eat in silence, the awkwardness he had been feeling since he had sat slowly starting to slip away. There was something comforting, in that situation, something he was not quite able to make sense of. The sounds of their spoons against the bowls and the light crackles coming from the fireplace were making Minho feel somewhat at ease.

“How did you like the others, the night at the inn?” Chan suddenly asked, his tone curious more than inquiring, and his bowl already almost empty.

“They were quite nice, I reckon,” Minho answered, sincerely. “I had just been wondering who they actually were. I kind of understood you work with them.”

“I do. They are friends, and they are the members of the unit of spellcasters I’m in charge of. Chose them myself.”

“Did you?” Minho said, incredulous, forgetting to bring his spoon all the way up to his mouth. He was actually quite impressed: to his knowledge, only high-up, senior Untamed spellcasters were allowed to choose mages suitable for holding public offices.

“Yes. Not without facing some resistance from the older spellcasters in chief, of course,” Chan explained, his tone suddenly stern. “Changbin and Jisung are both Untamed spellcasters born in families of non-holders and, sadly, this is not something high-rank, stuck-up Untamed spellcasters easily accept. And Felix, he is not even an Untamed spellcaster: he is an Impish spellcaster. You should have seen our superintendent’s face when I told him I was planning on adding him to my unit.”

Minho hardly held in a laugh as Chan looked at him with a big, cunning smile. His eyes sparkled with a beautiful light, and Minho could see just how much he cared for the people Chan himself had chosen to be part of his own unit. He lowered his head and looked down at his bowl before giving himself time to elaborate further on that thought.

“Why did you choose them?”

“Why, you ask me? Because they are amazing spellcasters, very smart and quick-witted. And they have a good heart, and good intentions and, for me, that’s enough to make an excellent mage,” Chan said simply, and Minho looked at him once more. “I can’t be bothered with idiocies about true-born spellcasters’ superiority, or about Untamed spellcasters’ primacy.”

“Neither can I,” Minho said, the words slipping from his mouth without him even noticing, and Chan just smiled at him once again.

He went back to his soup while Chan was absent-mindedly helping himself to Minho’s slice of bread. Once Minho had finished, he abandoned himself against the chair backrest and held his stomach with his hands, and Chan laughed at the satisfied look on his face.

“Thank you. It was really delicious.”

“It’s been my pleasure to serve you,” Chan said happily as he stood up with the bowls and the cutlery in his hands and headed to a small wooden vat he used to wash the dishes. “Actually, while we’re at it…” he suddenly said as he came back to the table and sat again. “Truth be told, I wanted to offer you a position in my unit as well.”

“Excuse me?” Minho said, his eyes wide open and an expression of pure incredulity on his face.

He stared at Chan, slightly shaking his head: he just could not believe that returning the brooch he had stolen had resulted in him being offered a job.

“We could make good use of your knowledge and your abilities,” Chan explained as though he was just stating the obvious. “Aside from all the little things you already do for the people of Yfibhor, I reckon you could do much more if you held a public office. The headquarters really need powerful Alchemists in their lanes,” he added lowering his voice, as if he was now talking to himself. “It has been quite a foolish decision to cut all Alchemists off our village’s leading positions, such a pointless decision...”

Minho continued to stare at Chan in disbelief, searching for something on his face that could give his true intentions away. But he was just looking back at him with his kind eyes and a plain expression on his face, patiently waiting for him to say something at all.

“I have to think about it,” Minho eventually said, and Chan clasped his hands together, merrily.

“Sure thing. Take all the time you need.”

Minho looked at him relax on his chair and turn his head to look outside the window, and so he did the same. He saw nothing but an infinite expanse of water, deep shades of gray and blue and green perfectly blending with each other. It was so peaceful, so stunning Minho almost felt his head spin.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Chan asked without averting his eyes from the sea, engrossed in the same view before Minho’s very eyes. His voice was low and soft. “That is why I came to live here. Sometimes I look at the ocean and find myself thinking life is really worth living.”

Minho turned his head and looked at Chan. He had said those words as though he had just shared a very important secret with him. Minho looked at his profile, perfectly illuminated by the morning light coming in through the window, and he realized the uncanny feeling growing in his stomach was something he could not quite put a name to.

🌱

Winter eventually came, and for five days Yfibhor’s alleys were flooded with floor lanterns and flower festoons. People started to gather daily both in public places and in private houses to celebrate the festivity, making the village look somewhat lively, somewhat warmer.

On the afternoon of the last day of celebrations, Seungmin, Jeongin and Hyunjin all came to Minho’s house, bringing freshly baked pastries and pies, as well as their lovely company, precious to both Minho and his grandmother. Before their arrival, Minho had lighted a big fire to warm up the house, as well as scented candles and some copper lanterns to brighten the dinette up. Small flakes of snow had started falling from the clouds that, since morning, had made the sky turn a bright shade of opal white.

“ _Odhrir_ ,” Hyunjin’s voice trilled as he tried to make himself be heard over Minho loudly swearing at Seungmin.

The two of them were sitting at the dining table, playing checkers, and Seungmin was mocking Minho’s poor moves as he earned another king. Hyunjin was sitting beside Minho’s grandmother, carefully brushing her long hair with a wooden comb as she was slowly rocking on her chair. Jeongin, for his part, was just sitting cross-legged on the floor, his stomach pleasantly filled with pastries and sweets, scratching the nape of one of Minho’s cats.

“What?” Minho said absent-mindedly, glaring at Seungmin while pondering over his next move.

“Have you got something to tell us?” Hyunjin asked airily. Both Minho and Seungmin turned their heads to look at him, confused expressions plastered on their faces, and Jeongin did the same from his spot on the floor. The cat hastily brushed her nose against his fingers, reclaiming his attention and more cuddles.

“What do you mean?”

Hyunjin quickly glanced at Minho, and then briefly pointed at his grandmother with his thumb. Minho looked at her, slightly lost, and then understood, from the look on her face, that she knew exactly what Hyunjin was talking about. And, at once, he knew it too. He sighed heavily and abandoned the checker he had been holding on the board.

“Why do you always have to do… this?” he asked, slightly annoyed, while gesturing vaguely in his grandmother’s direction. She didn’t turn her head towards him, but hid a little smile while facing the fire.

“You know I’m a Psychic, don’t you?” Hyunjin chimed in with a laugh, starting to brush the old woman’s hair again. “I would’ve understood something happened even if she hadn’t told me anything.”

“She does not talk, Hyunjin,” Minho said while blinking repeatedly. He knew it was completely unnecessary to point that out anyway.

“She does not need to.”

“Because you always do this thing where you communicate with your minds, or whatever, and it honestly makes me go nuts,” Minho nagged, his tone so petulant Seungmin started to silently mimic him in his blind spot, forcing Jeongin to hide a chuckle. He then looked straight at his grandmother again. “For someone who vowed not to speak ever again, you still manage to say quite a lot of things, don’t you?”

Minho shook his head in disbelief as his grandmother just laughed in silence. He sighed again, yet he could not help but slightly smile as well. He reckoned the issue would have come up anyway.

“So, what has happened?” Jeongin asked casually, feigning innocence, while the cat rubbed her face against the hand he had abandoned between his legs.

“I have been offered a job,” Minho said eventually, trying not to make eye contact with any of the others. He heard a gasp come from Jeongin and felt everyone’s eyes on him. Nobody said anything, as though they were just expecting him to continue talking, but he kept quiet as well, staring at his own hands, hoping for someone to say something. For some reason, he felt too uneasy to just say everything out loud without a little help from the others.

“By whom?” Seungmin finally asked.

Minho glanced at him shortly and then turned his head towards Hyunjin, who was looking at him with his big, welcoming eyes. His irises were dark, as they usually were when he was deeply rooted in the present moment and was not communicating with other dimensions, but Minho knew he had already understood, and he just wished he could say it for him.

“The Untamed spellcaster?” Hyunjin offered softly, as though he had grasped Minho’s silent plea, and Minho nodded, averting his gaze once again. He did not notice Seungmin and Hyunjin exchange a knowing look.

“What is his name again?” Seungmin asked, his tone curious but somewhat cautious, as if he thought he was not allowed to ask that question.

“Chan.”

“And what has he offered you, exactly?”

“A position in his unit, don’t really know what he expects me to do,” the room had fell so silent Minho almost felt dazed by the sound of his own voice. “He said they could make good use of my abilities, and then went on rambling about how pointless it was to cut Alchemists off the village’s leading positions.”

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Seungmin said as he leapt on his feet and came closer to Jeongin. He crouched down and started to rub the cat’s belly, making her purr contentedly. “Lately, even some Impish and Practical spellcasters are being allowed to hold certain public offices again… not important ones, of course, but you get what I mean,” he then fell silent, as though he was pondering over something. “I guess they’re still too afraid of Alchemists. I reckon they don’t really understand your kind of magic, and I bet that it makes them feel threatened.”

“We also were the ones who opposed Untamed spellcasters’ lone rise to power the most,” Minho remarked, and Seungmin nodded at him in agreement.

“Funny how we Psychics are not even taken into consideration, in all of this,” Hyunjin intervened with a light chortle, making the others laugh. He then just shrugged, still smiling, as if the thought of his kin not being really considered actually left him unbothered.

“Truth be told, your kind of magic is so rare even I sometimes forget you Psychics are actually real,” Minho told him with a smile. “You actually are the only Psychic we know of in Yfibhor.”

“That’s because we usually travel a lot. It is rare for a Psychic to settle down as I did,” Hyunjin explained casually as he started to braid Minho’s grandmother’s hair. “Just like Water, we flow.”

They fell silent again, as though each one of them was engrossed in their own thoughts. The cat was the only one making small, happy sounds as she was playing with Jeongin’s fingers.

“Well, have you accepted it?” Seungmin suddenly asked, glancing in Minho’s direction.

“Not yet.”

“But you are going to, I hope.”

“Should I?” Minho was genuinely confused on which was the best thing to do.

“Well, yes. Yes, you should,” Hyunjin said, almost impatiently, as if it was crystal clear that Minho had to accept Chan’s offer. Hyunjin then gently put a hand on Minho’s grandmother’s shoulder. “She as well wants you to, and you know it. And you know why.”

Minho glanced at his grandmother. Again, she was just facing the fire, peacefully, perfectly present in the moment, yet gracefully detached from everything at the same time. He just let out a deep breath, not knowing what else to say, and beckoned Seungmin over to the table.

“Come here. I want a rematch.”

So Seungmin sat down at the table again and defeated Minho two more times before he finally just gave up. After the sunset, they gathered the leftover pastries on one plate and brought it near the fireplace, where they all seated in a semicircle to tell tales about Yfibhor, as all the villagers traditionally did on the last night of celebrations. Once Minho’s grandmother went to bed, they lay on the carpet, their legs tangled and their hands intertwined, and lowered their voices as they made fun of everyone they knew, the sugar high making them feel somewhat euphoric. They laughed all night long, they laughed and laughed and Minho felt so happy he thought he might as well have been dreaming.

🌱

Minho’s days had been going on slowly and rather peacefully, mostly taking care of his plants growing in his small greenhouse and doing the seasonal inventory of the ingredients in his vault, until the very last week of December when, in a quiet cloudy afternoon, he heard a loud rumble coming from the village, almost instantly followed by a pungent burning smell that soon spread all over Minho’s house.

He lifted his head from the pair of trousers he was sewing up while sitting at the dining table, and saw his grandmother searching for him with her face, a scared expression making her brow furrow.

“I’m still here, _juju_ ,” Minho reassured her, and then hastily leapt on his feet and strode to the closest window.

As soon as he opened the curtains with one hand, the other still holding onto the trousers, he gasped in surprise: a giant, pitch black cloud of smoke was rising up into the sky from the center of the village. He hurriedly drew the curtains again with a jerk, he threw the trousers on the chair he had been sitting on and he wrapped himself up in a shawl. On his way to the door, he grabbed his cloak as well and fastened it securely under his chin.

“Something’s going on in the village,” he informed his grandmother. She was worriedly stroking one of the cats, who had just jumped on her lap with an elegant leap. “I am going to see what has happened. I’ll lock you in, stay there, the cats will keep an eye on you. I’ll be back soon.”

As soon as he stepped outside, he abruptly started to cough, feeling like his lungs were suddenly burning from their inside, and had to cover his nose and his mouth with his elbow in order to breathe properly. He locked the door and soon started to run among the fir trees, towards the village. The smell became more sickening with each step, and Minho noticed black grains floating around him as soon as he emerged from the grove of trees. The air became unbearably warm at once, and he started to distinctively hear people screaming in the distance. He picked up his pace, worry building up in his stomach with each stride.

He reached the center of the village in a matter of minutes, people running in all directions, and as he arrived in the main square, he abruptly stopped at the sight of the village temple on fire. His heart sank in his guts and, for a brief moment, he almost felt his legs give out.

When he managed to gather up his courage, he pressed his cloak’s fabric against his nose and mouth and hastily reached the crowd that had formed in front of the temple. He saw people crying, some others taking care of those who got injured, mothers dragging their children away from the fire. As he tried to take a peek over the crowd, standing on his toes, he caught a glimpse of a group of Practical spellcasters trying to extinguish the blazes, and he recognized Seungmin’s father. So he searched for Seungmin with his eyes – he just knew he was there as well – and he soon spotted him not far from where he was standing. A small space cleared in the crowd and he pushed his way towards his friend, whose face was crumpled in an expression of frightened incredulity. As soon as he reached him, he gently laid a hand on his shoulder.

 _“Odhrir_ …” Seungmin said, looking relieved at the sight of Minho’s face. Without thinking, he grabbed his hand and pulled him into a hug. Minho held him close as he felt Seungmin’s heart beat fast against his chest. Seeing him so agitated made him feel lost.

“Seungmin, what the hell is happening?” Minho asked as he released himself from the hug, trying to hide the flicker of fear in his voice.

“We don’t know, it just suddenly caught fire, we…” he stopped, his eyes wandering senselessly over the crowd, towards the flames. He seemed a little disconnected, so Minho tightened the grip around his hand, hoping it could make him feel more secure. Seungmin turned to him again, and the look in his eyes made Minho’s insides twirl. “It’s been an arson. Someone lighted it through magic, _odhrir_. This is not a normal fire.”

“Who…” Minho began, but Seungmin just shook his head, signaling he had no idea who could have done something so terrible.

They exchanged one final glance before they both looked ahead again. Despite the Practical spellcasters’ intervention, which helped contain the spreading of the flames to other buildings, the fire was not giving any sign it was going to be extinguished soon, therefore someone was sent to call reinforcements. And so, Minho and Seungmin just stood there, the other villagers’ presence as their only comfort, helplessly watching as their village temple crumbled down piece by piece, beam by beam, eaten up by unforgiving flames.

And suddenly, at once, a loud snap filled the air, followed by a thunder of dazzling light that made them all instinctively cover their eyes. In an instant, the fire was gone.

The crowd fell completely silent as everyone opened their eyes again and just stared at what was left of the temple in pure disbelief. The flames had completely vanished into the void.

In a matter of seconds, the square was filled with voices and murmurs again, people looking at one another with eyes filled with surprise. Minho and Seungmin exchanged a glance.

“It has not been the Practical spellcasters’ doing, am I right?” Minho asked, yet he already knew the answer. In fact, Seungmin slowly shook his head.

“Only some Untamed spellcasters can extinguish a fire like that,” he said absent-mindedly, and Minho stiffened, realization hitting him. So he looked around hastily, standing on his toes, a compelling thought pushing him to do so, and he soon spotted fair hair and a long cloak disappearing in an alley right behind the crowd.

“I will be back soon, wait for me,” he hastily told Seungmin, who just looked at him with a confused expression on his face.

Minho turned around without waiting for a reply, and forcibly pushed his way through the crowd once again. Once he managed to emerge from it, he started to run as fast as he could, soon reaching the alley where he had seen Chan disappear. It took no time for Minho to spot him again: he was walking fast down the dark alley, his body almost pressed against the stone wall, slightly hunched forward and wrapped up in his long cloak.

“Hey!” Minho called, picking up his pace, but Chan did not turn back. Minho filled his lungs as much as he could, so that he could raise his voice. “ _Odhrir_!”

Chan suddenly stopped in his tracks and turned his head with a jerk, squinting his eyes to see who had called for him. As soon as he saw Minho running towards him, his eyes slightly widened, and something on his face seemed to soften.

“Minho…” he said quietly while Minho closed the distance between them and stopped before him.

“Was it you?” Minho asked, trying his best to catch his breath. “Did you extinguish the fire?”

Chan simply nodded and, in that moment, Minho noticed his right arm: despite being partially covered by the fabric of the tunic Chan was wearing, Minho could clearly see how the skin on his forearm was covered with small blisters and deep burn wounds. Chan was holding the arm against his stomach with his other hand, and as soon as he realized Minho was staring at it, he tried to cover it with his cloak.

“Why are you going away?” Minho asked as gently as he could, feeling a shiver run down his spine at the thought of how dangerous the kind of magic performed by Chan had been for his arm to be reduced in that state.

“I… you are not the only one who does not really trust Untamed spellcasters,” Chan simply said, and Minho understood, and felt his heart sink in his stomach. It took him some seconds to notice Chan was smiling at him. “Minho, I’d really like to stay here with you, but I have to go to the headquarters. I have to report everything that has happened.”

“But your arm…” Minho began, concern lacing his voice as he started to feel somewhat nervous, but Chan stopped him with a jerk of his hand.

“Please, do not worry about it. It will heal in a couple of…”

“Bullshit!” Minho almost screamed, cutting Chan off. Chan looked at him in disbelief, his eyes wide open and his mouth agape, so Minho quickly regained his composure and slightly bowed, as an apology for his insolence. “I’m sorry. Please come over as soon as you are done with what you have to do. I will take care of everything.”

Chan could do nothing else but nod and, still astonished, he watched as Minho turned on his heels and ran back in the direction he had come from.

*

Chan knocked on the door when the sun was already gone and the night had arrived, bringing a silent, dark sky without stars. In the distance, the village had fallen silent, and not a single sound could be heard from the hill on which Minho’s house stood.

Minho soon opened the door and greeted Chan with a nod of his head. He helped him take off his cloak – the brooch pinned on its spot again – and took a glance at his arm, that Chan was still holding against his chest, and that was covered with a long, linen sleeve. Without saying a word, Minho turned around and headed downstairs. Chan followed him slowly and, as they arrived into the vault, he instinctively sat on the stool at the back of the room and watched as Minho gathered some ingredients and lighted the fire under his cauldron.

“Please, roll up your sleeve,” Minho said without looking at Chan, his voice low and firm.

Chan complied, frowning at the sight of his burnt skin, hardly holding in a wheeze as he rolled up the fabric of his tunic, and waited patiently for Minho to be done with the brew, trying not to think about the pain he was feeling all over his upper body.

He looked at Minho to distract himself, and saw him already brewing something in his cauldron, whispering words he was not able to hear. Even in the dim light, and even if he was already drifting off because of the fumes, he was able to clearly see Minho’s absorbed expression, and his eyes sparkle from all the magic circulating in his body. Chan stared at him, mesmerized by his movements, and almost missed the worried look Minho gave him. But he noticed it, and suddenly felt his ears heat up, and felt his insides become incredibly warm and mushy. It was something he could not really quite comprehend yet, being taken care of, but it felt good. And he felt safe.

Minho turned off the portable stove and grabbed a large jar from a shell on his right. He hastily opened its lid and extracted, one by one, three long, large seaweed leaves Chan had never seen in his life. They looked slimy and oily and, at Minho’s every movement, they trembled as though they were alive. Minho threw them in the cauldron and, at once, a sweetish smell spread through the whole vault. Chan inhaled it with a deep breath and felt the skin on his forearm slightly sting.

Once he had finished, Minho grabbed the cauldron by its handles and slowly came close to the stool Chan was sitting on. He put the cauldron on the nearest working table and, without saying a word, he gently grabbed Chan’s elbow to lift his arm at eye-level. With his other hand he extracted one of the long leaves from the cauldron and finally looked at Chan straight in the eye.

“It’s going to hurt,” he warned, and as soon as Chan nodded to tell him he was ready, he started to wrap the leaf around his forearm.

Chan winced and let out a surprised gasp, and his whole body tensed at the feeling of the leaf touching his burnt skin. Unexpectedly, it felt freezing cold. He suddenly felt as though sharp needles were piercing his flesh, all the way down to his bones. He started to tremble, and he felt little drops of sweat forming at his hairline as his breath became heavy and irregular.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Minho said quickly, his tone concerned and anxious. Yet, his movements remained precise and meticulous as he hastily wrapped the remaining two leaves around Chan’s skin. “I promise it will go away soon.”

And, in a matter of seconds, the pain actually started to go away, slowly. Chan started to breath properly again, his mind still dizzy and the sweat cold on his forehead, and he watched Minho grab a bandage and firmly wrap it up his arm to keep the leaves in place. His touch was delicate and caring, and Chan felt his brain quiver. He observed Minho’s face in the dim light coming from the small lanterns, observed his soft hair covering his forehead as he kept his head tilted, and suddenly realized how close he was. If he had leaned closer, he would have been able to feel his breath on his cheek.

“You’re staring,” Minho said without sparing Chan a glance, his eyes still fixed on his forearm.

“Sorry,” Chan quickly averted his gaze and just smiled, feeling a little awkward, but still too drowsy to actually be embarrassed. “Never saw your face this close.”

Minho looked at him sideways, trying to decipher both his tone and his expression, but he soon gave up and just resorted to grinning sardonically.

“Something interesting on it?”

Chan smiled as a reply, and said nothing more. He waited for Minho to secure the bandage with a little double knot and, as soon as he withdrew his hands, Chan looked at his arm. It wasn’t hurting anymore, and the leaves had started to feel warm around his skin. He could still smell their delicate scent coming though the bandage. He let his arm rest on his legs and looked at Minho again. He was still standing right before him, his arms now abandoned on his sides, looking quite tired and weary.

“You called me _odhrir_ ,” Chan suddenly said, and Minho’s eyebrows raised in surprise, as though those were the last words he was expecting to hear in that moment.

“Yes, I did,” he admitted tentatively, not quite sure what else to say.

“I never would have thought I could hear that coming from your mouth.”

Minho just laughed at that, and tiredly rubbed his eyes. “That makes two of us, then.” 

Chan let out a little laugh himself, and then stood up at once. He was about to take a step towards the stairs when Minho slightly touched his shoulder, so he stopped in his tracks. He tilted his head and watched him as he was obviously struggling to say something.

“I accept your offer,” Minho eventually blurted out. “I am going to be part of your unit.”

Chan’s confused expression quickly turned in a surprised one which, in turn, simply became the brightest smile Minho had ever seen on his face. His beaming expression almost seemed to bring a beautiful light into the vault. It was endearing, and it left Minho speechless.

“I feel honored,” Chan said, his voice soft and kind. “The others will be really happy as well.”

Minho let out a long breath, relieved at how easy it had been to say those words, at how happy Chan had seemed to hear them. So he slightly backed away but, in that same moment, Chan stretched out his hand. He delicately took a strand of Minho’s hair and tucked it behind his ear. Minho froze, startled, his eyes wide in surprise. Yet, he did not feel the urge to pull back. So he just remained still as Chan’s fingertips slightly brushed his lobe and his neck. For a moment, Chan seemed to hesitate, his eyes somewhat twitching at a passing thought, but he eventually withdrew his hand and just smiled kindly, as if he had simply pushed whatever he was thinking of aside.

“Your hair has grown longer,” he commented briefly.

Minho took another step back and lowered his head. He had the fleeting impression that those were not the words Chan had really intended to say, but he tried not to think about that thought too much as they both moved towards the staircase.

They went upstairs slowly, their steps heavy and tired, and Minho briefly explained to Chan how to remove the leaves the following day and how to properly clean his skin. On the doorstep, Chand thanked him profusely, and bowed so deeply that Minho, taken aback, felt the urge to grab him by the shoulders and try to make him stand straight again.

Once Minho had closed the door, he rested his back against it and deeply breathed in the smell of his house. His hand flew to the part of his neck Chan’s fingers had lingered on and he slowly brushed it, as though he could still feel his gentle touch on his skin. He stayed still as he stared at the darkness before his eyes, and he almost caught his heart skipping a beat.


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello hello~  
>  Here’s the third chapter, I’ll just leave you to it :o
> 
> ☾✩☽
> 
> Definitions:  
>  _Odhrir_ : used by males to address an older male they respect/are close to.  
>  _Nir_ : used by males to address an older woman they respect/are close to.  
>  _Juju_ : “grandma” in alchemists’ mother tongue.  
>  _Hez_ : Yfibhor’s currency.
> 
> Update schedule:  
>  4th chapter: November, 13  
>  5th chapter: November, 18  
>  (updates between 3pm and 7pm in Italy!)

In a cold morning in the beginning of January, Minho was coming down from the hill he lived on, strolling at a steady pace among the fir trees, whose highest branches were covered with the whitest snow. He was headed to the village center, and the smell of the trees and of their frozen needles was helping him feel a little less nervous, so he breathed it in deeply with each step.

The day before, while he was sitting right outside the front door, sharpening and greasing his oldest farming tools, he had seen the young village messenger emerge from the grove of trees with a rolled scroll in his hand. He had stopped before Minho, having a hard time to catch his breath, and had handed him the scroll, telling him the sender had already paid for the delivery. Once the boy had disappeared again, his slender body hidden by the majestic trees, Minho had opened the parchment and had read the message. It had been written with a beautifully neat handwriting, that Minho had soon understood was Chan’s. The message was short and simple, and Chan was formally asking him to meet up on the main road of the village the following day, early in the morning, so that they could discuss the last things before Minho could officially begin his new job. No other information nor specification was given, so Minho had just folded the parchment and had put it in his pocket. He had returned to his tools’ maintenance with his mind wandering somewhere else.

Once he arrived at the village and hurried through a couple of poorly lit alleys, he soon reached the main road, airy and bathed with light, its pavement graciously sprinkled with snow. After the fire, everything in the village had gone back to normal rather soon, even though civilians still did not know what had actually happened, which had led to several rumors and speculations. Minho instantly spotted Chan standing near a lonely hawker selling fruit and vegetables, his haversack full and bumpy.

“What have you bought?” he asked as soon as he was close enough, making Chan almost flinch. When his eyes landed on Minho’s, his smile widened.

“Grapefruits,” he said as he opened his haversack to make Minho take a glance at its inside. “I might not be an Alchemist, but I as well know they help fight colds.”

Minho smiled and nodded, and they set off as soon as Chan had said goodbye to the hawker. Minho swiftly moved to Chan’s right and silently observed what he could see of his arm. The blisters and bruises had almost completely disappeared, and the skin’s color was looking rather healthy again.

“It has healed well,” Minho stated, and Chan looked at him, confused, before understanding what he was referring to. He raised his arm at eye level and stared at it as if it was something that did not belong to his own body.

“It has also healed very fast. I have no idea how you have done it, but I am infinitely grateful.”

“Don’t mention it,” Minho said quickly, averting his eyes and feeling a hint of embarrassment pinch his stomach. He looked ahead and suddenly realized he had no idea where they were headed to. “Where are we going, if you don’t mind me asking?”

It was almost imperceptible, but Minho noticed that Chan’s body stiffened at his question.

“To the headquarters,” he said eventually, trying to look at Minho sideways to check for a reaction that did not come. “As much as I would prefer not to bring you there, I have to introduce you to the superintendent in order for you to officially become part of the unit.”

Minho looked at Chan, his plain expression not diving away any thought and, in that moment, it was Chan who felt the urge to avert his own eyes. It looked like he was feeling slightly guilty.

“You could have told me in the message you have sent,” Minho simply pointed out, and Chan compliantly nodded, as if he thought and knew Minho simply was right.

“I know. Perhaps, I was afraid that telling you right away could make you feel uneasy. Or even change your mind.”

“I had already accepted the job, and I stand by my word,” Minho’s voice did not sound angry, nor disappointed. It just sounded resolute. “Besides, I knew what I was putting myself into, don’t you reckon? Now, with all due respect, bring me to this saphead, make the introductions and then just get me out of there as soon as you can.”

Chan smiled fondly at Minho, feeling relieved, and he said nothing more. They closed the remaining distance to the headquarters in no time and Minho, already slightly intimidated by the majesty of the building’s façade, almost felt like the sentries at the entrance were going to stop him and impede him from stepping inside. But they did not spare him a glance as they simply bowed their heads to Chan, who politely reciprocated, and let them in easily.

If the outside was majestic, the inside was simply sumptuous. Minho blinked repeatedly at the sight of statues and tapestries, busts and marble columns, and almost did not hear Chan as he talked to him again while they were climbing up the stairs.

“Let me do the talking once we go in. He will probably tell me something I will not like, and I will probably have to tell him off, but he is very formal with strangers, so he won’t tell you anything uncomfortable,” Chan said quickly without looking at Minho, who was a couple of steps behind. If he was feeling nervous, he was concealing it well. They stopped in front of a large wooden door and Chan finally looked at Minho. “At least not directly. Ready?”

Minho simply nodded and Chan knocked on the door. A low, raspy voice from behind the door soon told them to go in, and so they did. Minho let Chan lead the way, and they both stopped in the center of the room, side by side, both with their hands clasped behind their backs, not far from a large wooden desk where a man with graying hair was sitting at. He was keeping his head low while writing something on a scroll and was not sparing them a glance, so Minho just briefly looked around himself. The room, differently from the rest of the building, was rather simple and empty. Aside from the desk and the pile of papers neatly placed on it, two large wooden bookcases covering half of the room walls, a fireplace and a seemingly very expensive rug, there was nothing more – no statues nor busts nor unnecessary furnishings.

The man finally put the feather quill pen in the ink bottle, raised his head and clasped his hands on the table. He briefly glanced at Minho, his eyes cold and distant, and then looked intensely at Chan. For a split second, Minho felt like he could have pierced through his head with how intense his eyes were. He felt Chan’s body slightly stiffen as he straightened his back and cleared his throat.

“Is this the mage you want to add to your unit?” the man finally asked, his tone impenetrable and clear.

“Yes,” Chan said plainly. Despite his body language was giving a certain uneasiness away, his voice sounded steady.

“Magical type? He does not seem an Untamed spellcaster.”

“In fact, he is not. He is an Alchemist. The most powerful one in Yfibhor, actually. He is the youngest of the Lees.”

“The sage’s grandson?” the man asked as he glanced at Minho once more. Minho just nodded and the man turned back to Chan again. His expression had shifted almost imperceptibly, and a deep wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. He slightly leaned forward, his posture suggesting something like a passive threaten.

“I thought I already had to explain how to choose your unit members after you stubbornly decided to hire that Impish spellcaster.”

From that sentence alone, Minho understood what Chan had meant with the words he had told him on their way to the office. He dared to take a look at him, and he saw his jaw clench, as though he was trying his hardest not to spit out the first words that came to his mind.

“Yes, you had. On my part, however, I had to politely ignore your suggestion, and I will have to do it once more if your intention is to advise something similar this time again,” Chan said, and Minho would have smiled if his tone had not been that cold. “We do not need more than three Untamed spellcasters, and the unit will benefit greatly from being composed of different types of mages. Moreover, Felix has largely proven himself worth his position, and Minho will as well. This means that I have already proven that I was right once, and something suggests me I will be right this time too.”

The room fell silent as Chan stopped talking, the tension so high and dense Minho could almost feel it penetrate his skin, and cut deep through his bones. The man was still staring at Chan with his piercing eyes, as though he was silently daring him to say something else, and Chan seemed to take up the challenge as he stubbornly started to speak again.

“Minho is the one who provided us with the potions during our last mission, and you know we needed them. He helped me when I found out I had gotten jinxed. He is also the one who made my arm heal after the arson, something not even the most powerful spellcaster among us would have been capable of doing.” He caught his breath, his eyes suddenly dull and severe, after the words had fallen from his mouth as a river in flood. "We need Alchemists in our lanes. You might be blinded by the arrogance of our kin, but I am not.”

Minho lowered his head and kept his eyes fixed on his feet, feeling as though he was witnessing a conversation he was actually not allowed to take part to. Chan, on his part, was just standing there beside him, his back straight and his eyes fierce, staring back at the man before him, and firmly standing his ground.

After a long silence, Minho heard the man sigh deeply and eventually held his head up again. He was looking at Chan with anger and disappointment, but it seemed to Minho he was trying his best not to show neither of those emotions.

“I am not going to change your mind, am I?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The man stared at Chan some more before eventually turning his head to Minho and laying his piercing eyes on him, making him involuntarily straighten his back.

“Your probationary period will begin in a week. This is a relatively uneventful moment for our village, and it will last at least another two or three weeks. So, in the meantime, you will meet up with the other members and will learn about your unit’s duties and responsibilities. After this period, when your role in the unit will be clearly defined, you will be paid the first day of each month. The money will be sent through one of our messengers. Chan will be your immediate supervisor, but your whole unit is ultimately subordinate to me. Anything to ask?”

“No, sir,” Minho said, trying his best to hold the man’s gaze. His eyes stayed on Minho’s a little longer, until he eventually averted his gaze and took a new scroll with one hand and the feather quill pen with the other.

“You may go,” he finally said without sparing Chan and Minho another glance.

They both bowed their heads slightly and turned on their heels, Chan leading the way once again, and they quickly got out of the room and, soon after, of the building. As they stepped outside, Minho felt like he was properly breathing again, and noticed his legs muscles had stiffened, a sign that they had been standing in the room a little longer than he had thought. They slowed down their pace once the main road was visible once again, and the building was far gone behind their shoulders.

“It has gone kind of smoothly, don’t you reckon?” Chan asked eventually, his lips tensed in a crooked smile. Minho scoffed at that.

“If you say so. But he really is a saphead.”

Chan let out a tired laugh and pressed his hands on his eyes. Minho glanced at him and noticed, for the first time that day, that he kind of looked exhausted, as though he had not been sleeping properly for quite a long time. Chan lowered his hands, showing a mild smile still lingering on his lips.

“Yes, he is not the nicest person, my father.”

“Your father?” Minho almost stopped in his tracks as he winced, his eyes wide and his jaw dropped. He stared at Chan in disbelief and then slowly started to shake his head. “I’ve just called your father a saphead...”

“Yes, well, he is,” Chan simply said, laughing. He then stopped, making Minho follow suit, and looked at him gently. “I have to go, now. You will officially begin in a week, so we will wait for you at my house. We usually work from there when we are not on a mission, since neither of us is particularly keen on spending too much time at the headquarters. We usually meet after lunchtime because, well, we all kind of like to sleep in.”

Minho smiled and then just nodded. He was feeling as though he had a lot of things to say, yet he kept his mouth shut. He waved to Chan as he watched him disappear in the distance, and lowered his arm only when he could not see his frame anymore.

🌱

A few days later, Minho woke up with a slight headache, and a strange, indefinite feeling making his guts twirl almost imperceptibly.

After lighting the fire, the first thing he always did in winter mornings, he ate some fruits while watching the sunrise through the window, sat at the dining table. He then spent some time cleaning up the house, lazily swinging from one room to the other as the sunlight tried to make its way through a thick layer of mist.

By mid-morning, he noticed his grandmother still had not gone downstairs, so he reached her bedroom and slowly cracked the door open, enough for him to peek in. It was still kind of dark, in the room, the curtains closed almost completely, but he clearly saw his grandmother still lying in bed.

“ _Juju_?” he called in a whisper, and when neither a sound nor a movement came in response, he pushed the door wide open, worry building up in his stomach, and hurried to the bed.

He kneeled down and moved closer with his head, his ears in tension. As soon as he heard she was still breathing, he tried to calm down the slightest bit, despite her breathing being a little irregular. He gently placed his palm on her forehead, but her body temperature seemed to be normal. He knew, however, that something was wrong. So he just stayed still, on his knees beside the bed, listening to her unsteady breathing, trying to figure out what was happening. And then, all of a sudden, realization hit him. He leapt on his feet at once, feeling like all of the air had suddenly disappeared from his lungs.

“ _Juju_...” he said again, his voice more uncertain and unclear than before, his headache suddenly making him feel like his head was going to implode.

He pressed his hands against his closed eyes, as though that gesture alone could make the thoughts that had started to whirl in his head stop, and he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. He opened his eyes again when he felt ready to face whatever he had to, and hastily tucked his grandmother in, blinking repeatedly, trying hard to swallow his own saliva, suddenly thick and sour.

“I don’t care whether you want it or not, but I’m going to get some help. I’ll tell the cats to keep an eye on you.”

So he rushed out of the room, ran down the stairs and grabbed his cloak. He threw the front door open and called for the cats as loud as he could. They soon gathered at his feet, as though they already knew what they had to do, and trotted inside the house, all the way up to the stairs. So Minho closed the door and stated running, fast, his sight blurred out by too many thoughts and his heart throbbing in his throat.

*

“Seungmin! Jeongin!”

Seungmin and Jeongin were pruning the big, old apple tree in Seungmin’s family’s fenced garden, and they simultaneously turned their heads as soon as they heard Minho call their names in the distance. They saw him run towards them, his hair ruffled and his face sweaty and pale, and they immediately knew something had happened. They both abandoned their pruning shears on the ground, and Seungmin hastily reached for the wooden gate and opened it as soon as Minho got closer.

“My grandmother… “ he began, barely breathing, as he stopped in front of Seungmin, who looked back at him with so much worry that he almost seemed scared. “She… something’s happening to her, I need you to come with me.”

Seungmin almost gasped, but he restrained himself from doing so, as though he knew that, in that moment, he needed to stay strong and focused not only for himself, but for Minho as well.

Without saying a word, he beckoned to Jeongin, who was standing some steps behind with his eyes full of concern and his arms hanging at his sides, he secured his cloak on his neck and then nodded at Minho, as a sign they were both ready to go.

So Minho turned around and started to run again, his eyes senselessly wandering in the distance. The sound of Seungmin and Jeongin’s feet steeping on the frozen leaves covering the ground was the only thing that was keeping him anchored to reality, the only thing that was preventing his mind from getting completely swallowed by terrifying thoughts and shapeless fears.

They arrived at Minho’s house in no time, their faces red from the sweat and the cold wind. Minho hastily unlocked the front door and beckoned the others to follow him inside, and then upstairs. As soon as they stepped in Minho’s grandmother’s room, the cats bolted out of it, as though they knew they were not responsible for her anymore.

Minho stepped aside and let Seungmin and Jeongin close the distance between them and the bed. He stayed still, holding his own hands and still catching his breath, and watched Seungmin slowly bending over his grandmother’s body, trying to get a better look at her. He then straightened up and put a hand on Jeongin’s shoulder, as an invite for him to come closer as well.

“Place your left hand on your right one, and move them right above her body while you concentrate your magic in the middle of your palms,” Seungmin told him in a whisper, as he caught hold of his wrists and placed his hands right above the woman’s stomach. He then smiled reassuringly. “You practiced. You know how to do this.”

Jeongin nodded almost imperceptibly, and then lowered his head to look at where his hands were. Seungmin, on his right, imitated his position and started to move his own hands right above Minho’s grandmother’s chest and head. Minho could see a dim, warm light emanate from their palms and, as neither of them was making a sound, the mere sight of his friends being there with him, trying to help without any hesitancy, made him feel comforted for a fleeting moment.

“Her organs…” Jeongin suddenly began in a whisper, and Seungmin nodded right away, as he already knew what the other was about to say.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” he said, and Jeongin knew he did not have to reply.

They both withdrew their hands, the dim light emanating from their palms instantly disappearing, and Seungmin looked straight at Minho, making his legs almost give out.

“Why don’t we go downstairs?” Seungmin suggested and, as the words left his mouth, Minho nodded and moved from his spot, leading the way along the corridor and towards the stairs.

The fire Minho had lit before dawn was dying out in the fireplace. They took off their cloaks and Minho and Jeongin sat down at the dining table, while Seungmin put the kettle on. They all remained in silence while they waited for the water to come to a boil, each of them too engrossed in their own thoughts to even say a word. Seungmin then poured the water in three enamel mugs, and he sprinkled a fistful of dried fruits and herbs in each of them. He came back to the table and placed one mug in front of Jeongin and one in front of Minho, who briefly thanked him, and eventually sat between them, holding his own mug from its handle. They all sipped their infusion in silence, and Seungmin glanced at Minho several times, waiting for him to say anything at all. He frowned when he understood Minho was not going to tell them anything without a little nudge, so he turned his head to his friend and gazed at him intensely.

“ _Odhrir_ , what is happening? She evidently has not caught any illness, yet it seems like all of her organs are working much slower, as though they are slowly giving out without a valid physiological reason. You know what is going on, don’t you?”

For a brief moment, Minho did not move at all, his eyes sunken because of tiredness, his face exhausted. Then, he put the mug on the table and sighed heavily.

“When the civil war was at its peak, my grandmother made a vow.”

“Not speaking ever again?” Jeongin shyly offered after a moment of silence, in which he had exchanged a brief glance with Seungmin. Minho shook his head and then hid his face behind the palms of his hands.

“No, another one. She vowed not to speak ever again only when the civil war ended, as a way to keep everything she had witnessed away from her life. And away from me since, at the time, I was little more than a child. This other vow, she made it right after my mother died. She…” he fell silent as he heard his own voice crack. Seungmin gently nudged him with his elbow and Minho offered him a tired smile before rubbing his eyes and continuing. “Maybe you are too young to remember, but have you ever noticed that, after the civil war ended, those who are now referred to as the sages of Yfibhor started to die one after the other? Beside my grandmother, there are only a couple left. That’s because, at least that’s what I have come to know, they all offered their lives to the Gods. They were the most powerful mages of Yfibhor, blessed by the Gods with powers unavailable to most, and they offered their lives back to those same Gods in hopes that the civil war would have ended soon, and that the village would have known peace again after a war and a civil war that had left Yfibhor almost lying in ruins. They offered their lives for the sake of younger generations.”

Minho’s speech was met with a deafening silence. Seungmin and Jeongin were both keeping their heads down, as though the words they had just heard were unbearably weighing on their shoulders, and it almost looked like they were both holding their breath. Minho took a sip of his infusion and lowered the mug again when he was ready to continue.

“Once the civil war ended, my grandmother went blind right after, and her motility soon started to deteriorate as well. Already an orphan, I was terrified I was going to lose her as well in no time. She was not that old, she still isn’t, and I just was not ready to lose the only part of my family I was left with. But nothing else happened, and for years things have just stayed like that so… so I just thought and hoped that, perhaps, nothing more was going to happen, that she was going to be fine, that she actually did not have to pay off her debt, not anymore. I’m afraid I was wrong.”

“But why now?” Jeongin eventually asked, his hands tucked under his knees and his shoulders hunched, his mug long forgotten on the table.

“I honestly don’t know,” Minho admitted tiredly and, with that, he eventually shut his mouth.

Seungmin, who had not moved a muscle from the moment Minho had started speaking, briefly looked at him sideways before suddenly bringing the mug to his lips to drink what was left of the infusion with a single sip. He then leapt on his feet, threw his cloak over his shoulders and headed to the door. He opened it and then swung around to glance at Jeongin and Minho, who looked back at him with lost eyes.

“Stay here. I’m going back to the village and I will come back with some healers, so that they can take her to the hospital,” he said, and then his face softened at the sight of Minho’s scared expression. “Don’t you worry, _odhrir_. They will take care of her well.”

So he went outside, and as soon as he closed the door behind him, the room fell silent again. Jeongin moved his chair closer to Minho’s and placed a comforting hand on his back. Minho looked at him, at how he was trying to offer a hesitant smile, at how he was trying to be reassuring while his eyes were betraying the worry that was eating him whole, and could do nothing more than stroke his hair gently, hoping that gesture alone could convey how grateful he was feeling.

🌱

On his first day of work, Minho was walking towards Chan’s house with too many thoughts running through his head, and a heavy heart as his only companion.

Just like he had been doing over the previous couple of days, he had spent the morning in one of the hospital small rooms, sitting on a chair near the bed his grandmother was lying in. Since the day she had been taken there, she had been mostly sleeping. The rare times she had been awake, she had been listening to Minho rambling about what had been going on in the village, about the cats and about the things he had been doing at their house while waiting for her to come back. Each time, she had held his hand and had tensed her whole body towards him in a way that had made his heart painfully clench.

That day, after eating a bowl of soup one of the healers had kindly offered him, he had left his grandmother in Seungmin and Jeongin’s company, since they had offered to stay with her until the end of visiting hours, so that Minho could go to work without worrying about leaving her alone.

Yet, as he was alone, strolling down the stony road right outside the village borders, he could not help but worry about a million other things – such as, among everything else, the obsessive thought that his grandmother was actually never going to come back home ever again. In fact, despite the healers’ dedication and attentive care, her condition was not getting any better. It was, in fact, gradually becoming more critical. And, as that was happening, Minho was hopelessly watching at his deepest fears become reality before his very eyes, unable to do anything at all. In fear, he was just waiting.

When he arrived at the little house near the mouth of the river and Chan opened the door, Minho understood that all of those consuming thoughts were showing on his face like red paint on a white canvas: Chan’s smile faltered when their eyes met. They looked at each other lengthily, Chan’s eyes inspecting Minho’s face, and Minho suddenly heard excited, loud voices coming from behind Chan’s shoulders, so he understood the others had already arrived.

“Is everything alright?” Chan whispered into Minho’s ear as he finally stepped inside. Chan’s breath tickled his skin, and Minho felt light shivers run all over his neck.

“Not really. Grandmother’s not doing very well,” he managed to say, his voice as low as Chan’s, and he could see Chan’s face become paler from the corner of his eye. So he just offered him a forced smile, meant to suggest that he was not going to talk about that, at least not in that moment, and Chan, of course, understood. He just nodded slightly, closed the door and gently put a hand on Minho’s back as a sign for him to go further inside.

“ _Odhrir!_ ” Jisung cried out, making both Felix and Changbin fall silent as they all turned their heads towards Minho, who just looked back at Jisung with a confused smile.

“Already respecting me that much?”

“Of course. We’re part of the same unit, now.”

“I reckon we are,” Minho just said as he sat on the only vacant chair left, between Changbin and Felix and in front of Chan, who briefly smiled at him before gathering some parchments scattered on the table.

“So, as Jisung has just rightly said, and as you all already know, Minho is now part of our unit. Introductions are not needed, and you all already know what his probationary period entails, so I suggest we directly dive into the matter we need to discuss today,” he said and everyone nodded in agreement. Minho could just tell, by the way he had spoken and by the way everyone had instinctively, respectfully listened in silence, that Chan was just naturally born to be a leader. He tensed a little when he saw Chan’s eyes linger on his once more before he started to speak again. “Just to briefly update you on what is happening: recently, one of our units has found out the fire that broke out in the village at the end of December was set by an anonymous revolutionary group of spellcasters from Fráhar, the village we have started negotiating with in November. I had most likely got jinxed by someone from that same group.”

“So they do not want their village to twin with ours,” Minho said, and Chan nodded. “What types of spellcasters are we talking about?”

“We don’t really know,” Changbin chimed in. “They most likely are spellcasters who belong to different magical types. When the war among the shires in Afjár was coming to an end, civil wars broke out in almost all of the villages and citadels, just like it happened here in Yfibhor. Yet, while here Untamed spellcasters ended up coming to power and other types of mages, despite not being happy with that, chose peace over resentment and joined forces to help Yfibhor get back on its feet, in other citadels and villages it did not happen quite the same. In Fráhar, the political situation is still rather unstable. The village is currently ruled by a small group composed of non-holders for the most part, and I reckon the rioters do not agree with their political decisions, which of course include the kind of negotiations they are carrying out with other villages. Maybe they also wish for another war to break out, we still don’t really know.”

“Do we actually need to maintain relations with their village?” Felix asked the room at large after a moment of silence.

“I’m afraid we do,” Chan replied with a heavy sigh that suggested he would have actually preferred not having to do so. “Their village, being located in the southern area of Afjár, has easy access to resources and supplies our people, and our economy in general, would greatly benefit from. It may sound trivial, but some plants just do not grow, on our land. Moreover, peace must be maintained not only inside the borders of our village, but also outside of them.”

“So, what now?” Jisung asked, and Chan handed him one of the parchments he had gathered a moment before, making a sign to make it pass around.

“This is the information we have been able to gather until now. We are currently collaborating with the governors of Fráhar in order to identify the heads of the revolutionary group. As you all might be imagining, the aim is to search for and create a dialogue with the rioters, since resorting to violence is not an option anymore, neither for Fráhar nor for us. Also, our unit will be probably sent there again in the near future, so any piece of information the other units have gathered, and will be able to gather from now on, will serve as the basis from which we will plan our intervention.”

Minho attentively read the official record when Felix gave it to him, and then listened as the others continued discussing the village’s relations with other shires.

So the afternoon flew in the bat of an eye, and they soon found themselves eating a soup Chan had prepared for them offhand as the sun had gone down and dinner time had come, and as their conversation had naturally progressed from job-related matters to trivial topics.

And so Minho found out – something he had already had the chance to witness during the night at the inn – that his unit members, soon to become his friends, were all ridiculously humorous, and all surprisingly kind, each of them in their own, peculiar way. He offered to wash the dishes and Felix quickly joined him. With their hands immersed in the water inside the wooden vat, they talked about Felix’s homeland, a vast region in the far east of Afjár, once home to some of the most ancient dynasties of Impish spellcasters, and they laughed as Felix tried to teach him some words in his native language and Minho failed miserably. And that evening, even if only for a few hours, he finally felt relieved.

Soon after, when night was about to come, they all decided to head back home, their stomachs full and their eyes puffy because of sleepiness. Felix and Jisung headed off together, and Changbin soon followed suit. Chan held the door open for him and, as soon as he could not see him anymore in the distance, he turned his head to Minho and saw him standing in the middle of the room, fidgeting with his fingers and looking a bit lost.

“Can I stay a little longer?” he suddenly asked in a voice so small his words almost disappeared in the sounds of the ocean that were creeping into the house through the door.

“Of course,” Chan said, his tone gentle and tender, and he slowly closed the door. “Of course you can.”

Without saying anything, he beckoned Minho to sit at the table again and, as soon as he did so, he placed a glass in front of him. He rummaged in a near cupboard and came back to the table with a longneck bottle filled with a thick liquid.

“What is this?” Minho asked as Chan poured the brew in his glass.

“I actually don’t know. A friend of mine gave it to me, she is a Practical spellcaster and a herbalist. She told me it helps soothe the nerves.”

Minho just nodded and took several sips of the drink, absent-mindedly. He could clearly taste valerian root and chamomile, and immediately started to feel his stomach warm up, and his muscles loosen up.

“Are you sure your friend is not an Alchemist?” he asked giving Chan a half smile, and Chan just shrugged in response. Minho’s smile soon faltered as he abandoned his head on his hand and a wave of thoughts flooded his mind at once. “My grandmother is at the hospital, right now. I reckon she might not have much time left,” he suddenly said, and Chan instinctively covered his mouth as he lightly gasped.

“I thought her health condition was actually kind of good,” he said, his voice low, but he then immediately fell silent, as if he had just realized something. “Has it something to do with the sages’ vow?”

“You know about that, don’t you?” Minho asked, and Chan nodded as he lowered his hand and abandoned it on the table.

“I do. What they have done for our village is greater than anything my kin has ever been able to do. The Gods have never been blind to the actions of such powerful, righteous mages, whose requests have never fallen on deaf ears.”

“The Gods might have listened, but they have also asked for something irreparable in return.”

Chan stared into Minho’s eyes and the only thing he seemed to see was a sorrow so profound he could feel it deep inside his own bones. He only got a tired smile in return as Minho looked right back at him, his expression exuding nothing more than mere exhaustion.

“Why don’t you stay over?” Chan suddenly asked, and Minho blinked repeatedly, as though he had not understood what the other had just said. “For the night. It’s already too dark outside, and maybe it would be better for you not to stay home alone, right now.”

Minho remained silent, taken aback by the offer, but found himself nodding in agreement without noticing. He blamed it on how tired he was feeling, on how cold it was, outside, too cold for him to even think about leaving the comfort of a warm house and walk for at least one hour in the night.

So he took one last sip of the drink Chan had given him and then just followed him in his bedroom – a small, bare room with a bed placed against one of the walls, and an old, wooden chest of drawers against the opposite wall – and watched him as he laid a couple of wool blankets on the carpet. Chan then rummaged in one of the drawers again and came closer to Minho, handing him some clean clothes.

“You can sleep in my bed,” he just said as Minho grabbed the tunic and the pants and thanked him with a nod.

Chan swung around and started to get undressed, making Minho automatically avert his gaze, slightly embarrassed despite the room being almost completely dark. When he understood Chan was not going to look at him again until he had changed himself, he quickly took off his garments and put on the things Chan had given him. They smelled good, and they were comfortable, and Minho inexplicably felt at ease, as though he actually was home.

“I’m done,” he eventually said and he saw, from the corner of his eye, Chan move again, drop to the floor and then try to make himself comfortable on that improvised sleeping place.

Minho stared at him, unsure of what to do, but he soon made up his mind and got on the floor himself. Once he was beside Chan, only a few inches separating their bodies, Minho looked back at him, easily finding his glistening eyes. Even in the dark, he could sense the confused expression on his face.

“I am not going to sleep in your bed when you are here on the floor,” Minho just stated, and then proceeded to make himself comfortable under the wool blanket.

Chan understood it was no use for him to insist. So he said nothing, and simply adjusted himself under the same, large blanket Minho’s body was already wrapped in. Lying on their backs, they both remained still, staring at the ceiling in the dark, listening to the sounds and the echoes of the ocean that, from there, seemed to be far, far away.

“I’ve got the feeling that my grandmother is letting herself go because she thinks I’m safe now,” Minho mumbled under his breath, and Chan slightly tilted his head towards him.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking out loud,” Minho just said, and then sighed contentedly because of the warmness surrounding his tired limbs. “Thank you for letting me stay.”

“Thank you for staying,” Chan said in a whisper, and Minho could feel, from the tone of his voice, that he was smiling. “It gets quite lonely here, at night, and I often find it hard to fall asleep. Sometimes, the others stay over and it helps a lot. Felix lets me hug him, ever so often, to help me fall asleep faster.”

“Don’t you dare hug me,” Minho hastily said, making Chan laugh. He smiled, and almost surprised himself when he added: “but you can hold my hand, if you want to.”

Chan stopped laughing at once, and Minho understood those were not the words he was expecting to hear, not coming from him. He remained still, unsure of what Chan was actually thinking about, and then felt him silently search for his hand under the blanket. When his fingers gently wrapped around Minho’s, his heart started to beat a little bit faster, and his guts twitched a little too much, but he tried his best to ignore his body’s reactions, and simply ended up intertwining his fingers with Chan’s.

He felt warm, a whole new kind of warmness, something very different from the feeling that the wool blanket wrapped around his body was giving him. He listened to Chan breathing steadily beside him and, without noticing, he tightened the grip around his hand. It took him only a few moments to feel like he was already starting to drift off.

“You said your grandmother thinks you are safe now, but what about you? Do you actually feel safe?” Chan asked absent-mindedly, his voice nothing more than a whisper, his eyes closed and his thoughts almost already somewhere else.

“I reckon I kind of do,” Minho murmured, his heart still pounding funnily against his ribcage.

As a comfortable silence fell between them once again, they both fell asleep in the bat of an eye.

A few hours later, when the room was illuminated by the glimmering light of the morning, Chan slowly opened his eyes and soon understood he was alone: the house was quiet and the only things he could hear were the seagulls crying out in the distance, and the ocean waking up in big, airy waves.

The spot beside him was empty and his fingers, which he had kept intertwined with Minho’s all night long, were now wrapped around nothing more than a tiny, green pebble, a kind he had never seen near the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, the next chapter will be one hell of a ride.  
> Again, this is unbetaed T.T I always try to reread everything several times, even after a chapter has been posted, but I usually do it at night because I don’t have time during the day, so I’m sure I don’t notice some spelling/grammar mistakes and I’m really sorry T.T I’ve already found some mistakes in the previous chapters and I’ve fixed them, and I’ll try to do the same as I continue posting. English is tricky!! I just try my best!! T.T
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for reading ♡


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Here’s the fourth chapter! These past days have been kinda hectic and I’ve only reread it a couple of times, so I’m sure it’s not perfect. Anyways, all I can say is… brace yourselves 😨
> 
> ☾✩☽
> 
> Definitions:  
>  _Odhrir_ : used by males to address an older male they respect/are close to.  
>  _Nir_ : used by males to address an older woman they respect/are close to.  
>  _Juju_ : “grandma” in Alchemists’ mother tongue.  
>  _Hez_ : Yfibhor’s currency.
> 
> I will post the fifth and last chapter next Wednesday, between 3pm and 7pm in Italy!

The night he had spent at Chan’s house, sleeping beside him on the floor with their hands tightly intertwined, had left Minho dealing with the uneasy, confusing thought that he was, in fact, developing feelings for him. Feelings that were different from what he felt every time he was making a new friend, something more profound despite being, at the same time, far less well-defined.

Unable to process that thought, along with the fears and concerns he had been facing since January, he welcomed February determined to take one day at a time, trying to push aside all of those thoughts that were too much for him to bear. When he was not meeting up with his unit members to learn about the responsibilities his new position entailed, his days were mostly spent between the hospital and his house, in which he only slept, trying to deal with the evidence – an evidence that was getting clearer and clearer as the days passed by – that those were the last days his grandmother was spending with him on Earth.

Knowing they had not got long left, he brought her winter wildflowers every day, and every evening, before heading home, he stayed after visiting hours and read her to sleep. When he looked at her, even if she was unable to see, and even if she was still determined not to let a word slip from her lips, he could see on her face all the love she held for him. When night came, he thought about it again and again while lying in his bed, trying to engrave that image in his memory so that he could never, ever forget.

One night, one of the healers gently patted him on one shoulder. As he opened his eyes, he noticed he had fallen asleep while still sitting near his grandmother’s bed.

“Just go home, dear. It’s late. Her condition is quite stable, you will find her just like she is now tomorrow morning. Go rest, please. It is no use for you to be here, right now.”

So he headed home, his sleepiness slowly vanishing with each step, the night mist making shivers bloom all over his skin. Once he arrived, he took off his cloak and his shawl and, as he looked at the empty room, he felt a slight sense of desperation at the thought that the only things that were waiting for him, in his own house, were silence and dust. The cats as well were nowhere to be seen.

So, without giving it a second thought, he lighted some candles and then reached for one of the cupboards near the stove. He took a glass and a large, heavy bottle of wine one of the villagers had given him as a gift during winter celebrations, and sat at the table as he opened it.

He had just started to drink when he heard a light knock on the door. He stood up almost instantly, afraid that someone had gone there to tell him something had happened to his grandmother. But, as he threw the door open, fear was soon replaced with astonishment, and his heart leapt in his throat at the sight of Chan’s smiling face.

“ _Odhrir_. What are you doing here?”

“I just thought you could use some company. I went to the hospital, but a healer told me they had to send you home out of desperation,” Chan briefly explained, and then he glanced at the glass of wine in Minho’s hand. He looked at him again with a questioning expression on his face.

“Would you like to drink something with me?” Minho just asked him after a moment of silence, unable to say much else, and Chan just smiled and nodded, so Minho let him in and closed the door.

Chan took off his cloak and Minho placed a glass full of wine in his hand. Chan briefly thanked him and slightly raised his glass before taking a sip. He looked around just like he had done before, seeming particularly curios, as he always did when he was in Minho's house. Then, as though he had come to his senses, he slightly shook his head and came closer to the dining table, at which Minho was already sitting.

“How are you feeling?” Chan asked as he sat on the chair beside Minho.

“I have been better,” Minho admitted with a sad smile. “I just needed to distract myself for a bit,” he added, pointing at the bottle of wine, and Chan nodded as though he had understood and did not need him to say anything else.

He just poured Minho and himself some more wine, and they clinked their glasses before drinking. They sipped the wine in silence, stealing glances at each other from time to time, and Minho suddenly felt grateful – a gratefulness that came straight from his guts – that Chan was there with him. Moreover, he might have been wrong but Chan seemed to be rather joyous to be there, his expression airy and peaceful, and that thought, he did not quite know why, filled his heart with a feeling of pure serenity.

“Are we friends, now?” Chan broke the silence all of a sudden, mindlessly playing with his already empty glass, and Minho, emerging from his own thoughts, gave him a half-smile.

“You are my employer now, to be exact.”

“Oh, shut up,” Chan said with a snort, and dismissed Minho’s words with a lazy hand gesture.

Minho poured himself some more wine, and when Chan asked him to fill his glass as well, he gladly complied. He was already feeling rather dizzy, his hands itching funnily and his head spinning ever so slightly.

“Yes, we are,” he eventually said. “We are friends. Perhaps we have always been.”

“You said we were not, the night at the inn.”

“Perhaps I was wrong,” Minho said, leaning towards Chan as though he was telling him a secret, and then drank all the wine in his glass in one sip. “Why did you ask?”

Chan shrugged and drank all of his wine as well. When he lowered the glass, Minho glanced at him and noticed his expression was tender and his eyes were watery, as though his mind was suddenly filled with a memory that was particularly close to his heart.

“Don’t know. I have been kind of thinking about this, lately. About you, to be exact.”

Minho, who was reaching for the bottle once again, stopped midway, abruptly, his arm awkwardly outstretched. He slightly opened his mouth but just kept quiet: he could not bring himself to ask Chan what he had meant with those words.

So he just resorted to acting as though he had said nothing at all, and eventually closed the distance between his hand and the bottle. He poured some more wine in both his glass and Chan’s, until he emptied the bottle completely. He managed to relax again while sipping what was left of the wine and while listening to the familiar silence that always filled his house.

Only then he dared to glance at Chan once more, and he noticed that he had slightly moved on his chair, so that his body was almost completely facing Minho’s, and he was looking at him intensely, with a delicate smile dancing on his lips.

“Something interesting on my face?” Minho asked idly, and Chan’s smile broadened so much his eyes disappeared behind his eyelids.

“Nothing in particular. You just are very handsome,” he simply said, his voice low and raw, his eyes heavy-lidded and his head loosely resting on his hand.

He was still smiling, but his smile was gentle again, and it was making him seem content, so Minho could not help but smile back. He lazily looked at Chan’s neck dimly illuminated by the candles scattered around the room, and inexplicably felt his mouth dry out when his mind started to dance around blurry thoughts of bed sheets and clammy skin.

“I can’t quite tell if you’re trying to get into my good books, or if you’re just trying to get into my pants.”

He had let the words slip without giving them too much thought, as if someone else had just put them on his tongue.

Chan, taken aback by his sudden boldness, looked back at him with wide eyes, and then laughed wholeheartedly, a deep, heartfelt laugh that came straight from his stomach. He then quickly stared back at him yet again, his pupils dilated and his laughter far gone, as though a compelling thought had just crossed his mind. ~~~~

“Let’s just say I might have been pushing my luck trying to get into both,” he causally replied in a mutter.

Minho asked himself if he had just imagined the eagerness he had sensed in Chan’s voice. He told himself they were both too far gone for him to even care.

So, aching for a contact, he just let his hand slip on one of Chan’s thighs, and then moved on the edge of his chair, leaning closer. He could feel the smell of Chan’s skin and the warmness of his body surround him whole, so he closed his eyes and breathed in, deeply, as though he was hoping to satisfy all of his needs with that single breath alone. He felt him slightly move as well, and felt his own hand slip on Chan’s inner thigh, a place of his body he had never dared to even think about.

He felt so warm he couldn’t bear to move anymore. So he simply plucked up his courage and opened his eyes again, and realized Chan’s face was just a few inches away. He could have sworn the bedroom eyes he was giving him were silently telling him he had never seen anyone so beautiful, anyone so desirable, and Minho found himself desperately hoping he was not foolishly deceiving himself.

But, all of a sudden, the thought of not knowing what all of that might have meant crossed his mind like a fleeting flame, and made him feel scared, made him feel lost. And so he blinked repeatedly, trying to regain his composure, and backed away the slightest bit.

“We are drunk,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

Chan looked slightly lost, his eyes searching for something on Minho’s sudden change of expression, but then he seemed to understand. He smiled back, a smile so delicate it almost hurt.

“Yes, we are,” he agreed. He wrapped his fingers around Minho’s wrist, softly, and slowly put his hand back on the table. “I think I should go.”

“Perhaps you should.”

And so Minho watched him stand up and fumble around clumsily to find his cloak. He laughed at him when he almost tripped on the way to the door, and Chan laughed as well, not able to do much else. He watched him open the door and turn around to tell him goodnight, his voice so tender a shiver ran through Minho’s spine, all the way up to the back of his brain.

Chan went away, swallowed by the night, and Minho could do nothing more than cross his arms on the table, a little nest to rest his head in, waiting for sleep to come.

🌱

The sun was shining bright in the clearest sky, a beautiful day in the middle of winter where nature seemed to be peacefully resting, when Minho knew his grandmother was going to pass away.

The night before, her condition had gotten irreparably worse, and he had abruptly woken up because of a loud banging on his front door: a healer had come to his house to tell him his grandmother’s condition had gotten suddenly, irreparably worse. They had walked together in the night, headed to the village, sharing a silence that, much to Minho’s surprise, had felt comfortable. Once they had arrived to the hospital, he had sat next to his grandmother and had hold her hand tight, and there he had just waited.

A few hours later, when the day was broad, Seungmin and Jeongin had arrived as well, and Minho knew they had been informed by one of the healers. They had brought some water and some comfort food, and Minho had felt grateful. Even if it was not needed, Seungmin had checked Minho’s grandmother state by placing his hands a few inches above her body, just like he had done when her condition had started to aggravate, and then he had just touched Minho’s shoulder, and he had tried to smile at him, but he had failed.

Hyunjin had arrived not long after. He had entered the room bringing, with him, the familiar smell of the forest he lived in, of his incents and smudge sticks, and had gone perch on the internal windowsill after giving Minho a warm hug. Just like a little bird, he had made himself small against the glass.

And there they were, waiting in silence, exchanging some words only when needed, or when everything seemed to become too much to bear. When Minho started to feel like his thoughts were not even making sense anymore, due to tiredness and grief, his grandmother sighed heavily, and Hyunjin hopped off the windowsill, making the others wince.

“ _Odhrir_ …” he began, his eyes big and watery, his irises suddenly paler. “I think… I think her time has come. She is asking me to do something.”

Minho stared at him with an indecipherable look on his face, fear making his guts twirl and making him feel like he just needed to throw up. He watched as Hyunjin sat on the edge of the bed and then looked at his grandmother, who had suddenly opened her eyes, white and vacuous. He leaned closer to her and softly called her name as he stroke her hair, before turning his head towards Hyunjin again. He had gently grabbed her hand, and was looking at her face intently, as though he was waiting for her to tell him something.

“She says she wants to see you,” he eventually said, and Minho could not help but furrow his brow, confused. Hyunjin just opened his other hand in front of his face and beckoned him to take it, which he hastily did. “And I will lend her my eyes.”

Minho remained still, as though he had just got stuck in a place between dream and reality, from which he could not seem to come back. That really was it, and he was not quite sure he had completely wrapped his mind around that thought.

He looked at his grandmother again, her eyelids hardly open, her breathing shaky. He sensed Seungmin and Jeongin’s comforting presence behind his shoulders, the only thing that seemed to make him still feel somewhat grounded in reality.

“Please, look at me,” Hyunjin said as he held his hand tighter, and so Minho did.

Hyunjin’s eyes had definitely changed color – they had become a beautiful, mesmerizing shade of ivory gold – and the way they were looking back at Minho made him feel uneasy, as though it was not Hyunjin who was staring at him.

At once, Hyunjin’s expression changed, and it looked like air got stuck in his throat. Then, all of a sudden, two big, pearly tears fell from his eyes, leaving river-like shadows on his cheeks.

“She said… she said you are beautiful,” he eventually said, his voice cracking and the words hardly leaving his mouth as he tried to blink the tears away. “And that you look just like your mother.”

Minho stared right back at Hyunjin in disbelief, his eyes wide and watery, his mind suddenly gone blank. He hardly remembered his mother’s face, and had never really talked about her since the day she had passed away. Even before vowing not to speak ever again, his grandmother as well had never mentioned her daughter since the day she had lost her. That way, pain had seemed more bearable.

Minho glanced at his grandmother, but a slight squeeze from Hyunjin’s hand reminded him his grandmother actually was right in front of him, seeing through his friend’s eyes, using his voice as though it was hers. As he turned to face Hyunjin again, he saw his lips tremble almost uncontrollably as small sobs escaped his mouth and big, glassy tears continued to fall from his eyes.

“She loves you, so, so much. She is proud of you, and she trusts you,” Hyunjin continued, trying to talk as clearly as he could despite his own sobs, and despite the heartbreaking, small sounds coming from both Seungmin and Jeongin. “And she hopes you have found the love you deserve. She thinks you have.”

At that, Minho finally, definitely broke down. He broke eye contact with Hyunjin, who had shut his mouth, and buried his face in his grandmother’s lap, and started to weep almost uncontrollably. The others remained in silence, their heads low as a sign of respect to his grief.

When he heard a last, long breath come from his grandmother’s mouth, he raised his head up again, and looked at her face in disbelief, unable to make sense of what was happening before his very eyes. All the time he had spent waiting had not been enough for him to be prepared to face that moment.

“ _Juju_!” he finally screamed, unable to hold back anymore, and he threw himself on his grandmother’s body, and took her in his arms, and held her close to his chest, closer than he had ever done before. “ _Juju,_ please, don’t leave me! Please, please! Just stay here with me!”

He almost did not notice the healers running inside the room, nor his friends grabbing his arms and trying to drag him away from his grandmother’s body, by then lifeless. He screamed and cried out her name, he squirmed and writhed with all his might, trying to get the others off him.

Only when he was not able to put up resistance anymore, exhausted, he let them pull him away and make him sit on the chair as the healers gathered around the bed. He stayed still, hearing nothing but a deafening white noise, seeing nothing more than blurry silhouettes, and he just felt emptied out, a shell with nothing inside.

And he just felt desperately blue, and desperately lonely, just like a tree without its roots.

🌱

The following day, the funeral was rather contained and discreet. Despite the whole village had known of the sage’s death soon after she had passed away, the villagers had respectfully given Minho his space, and the possibility to mourn privately. He had only asked for Seungmin, Jeongin and Hyunjin to be there, in hopes that they could alleviate the feeling of complete, definitive loneliness he had been feeling since the day before. And so they were there, standing beside him with their heads down, waiting for the shepherd to say farewell to Minho’s grandmother, whose body had been put in a beautiful pecan wood casket a few hours before. Before closing the lid, Minho had put a small bouquet of winter wildflowers between her intertwined fingers, and had kissed her forehead goodbye.

Once the ritual had finished, Minho slightly caressed the coffin’s surface. Then, he reluctantly took a step back and he nodded at the two Practical spellcasters in charge of burying the casket. As he watched it disappear in the ground’s depths, underneath heavy heaps of soil, inside their mother Earth’s welcoming womb, he could not help but think that his grandmother was really coming back to where she had always belonged.

Lost in his own thoughts, he only came to himself when Hyunjin gently touched his shoulder.

“Let’s go, _odhrir_. You know that the villagers will soon start to come visit you to offer their condolences.”

Minho briefly looked at Hyunjin, feeling slightly lost, but then nodded as he took one last glance at the spot in which the coffin had been completely buried: the ground had perfectly returned in place, as though nothing had happened, only a little engraved stone to remind posterity one of the sages of the village had been buried there. He thanked the shepherd and the spellcasters and then turned around to follow his friends.

He had just taken a few steps when he noticed a man standing in the shadow of the first row of trees on their left. In an instant, much to his own surprise, he recognized him, and immediately changed direction.

“I will be back in a minute,” he warned the others, and he picked up his pace.

As he came closer to the old man and saw him more clearly, he noticed how much he had grown old since the last time he had seen him, the signs of time passing by evident of his face. He was wearing a long robe, and was leaning all of his bodyweight on a gnarled wood cane. He gently smiled at Minho as he stopped in front of him, and looked at him as though he was a long lost friend.

“You remember me,” he just said, his voice low and steady. Minho nodded and the man briefly looked somewhere into the distance, and Minho understood he was looking at the spot in which the coffin had just been buried. “The Gods have taken her as well, at last.”

Minho just kept quiet and then nodded once again, not knowing what to say. He observed the old sage intently. His eyes were pale and weary, just like those of a person who had been through a lot. Nevertheless, they looked quite lively in their own way, and shone of a light Minho was sure he had only seen in the way his grandmother used to carry herself despite her physical condition.

“Are you afraid?” he finally asked, as though something was telling him that those were the only sensible words to say in that moment. The sage shook his head and smiled as he laid his lovely eyes on Minho yet again.

“I am not. I know we did what we had to, and that is enough for me to accept my fate,” he said, and Minho believed him wholeheartedly. He was sure the way the sage was looking at him was full of the same affection his grandmother reserved to him and him only. “She really loved you, more than she has ever loved anybody else.”

“I know,” Minho said with a small smile, and that was true, truer than anything else: he really did know, and that was the certainty he was going to carry in his heart for the rest of his days on Earth.

They exchanged one final look, and then Minho deeply bowed at the sage before turning on his heels and heading back to where his friends were waiting for him.

As he was coming closer to them once again, he looked at them as they were peacefully talking and could not help but notice how their bodies – very much alive – almost seemed to be shining in the sunlight.

*

As it traditionally happened after someone in Yfibhor died, the hours after the funeral were filled with villagers coming in and out Minho’s house, bringing homemade food, flowers and words of comfort. Seungmin, Jeongin and Hyunjin had stayed over to help Minho with his hospitality duties, and were doing their best to deal with the large number of people showing up to offer their condolences, and to keep Minho away from those who could not help but ask too much. The sage’s sudden death, which had come as a surprise to most of the villagers, had surely not passed unnoticed.

Minho was arranging a bunch of flowers in a jar near the kitchen window while absently listening to the voices all around him, when Hyunjin appeared next to him, lightly, like a petal carried by the slightest breeze.

“ _Odhrir_ , there is someone you might want to see, outside.”

Minho looked at him curiously, but Hyunjin just smiled. Despite his smile, he looked tired, his eyes watery and swollen, and Minho made a mental note to cook for him, Seungmin and Jeongin once all the people had gone away. He followed him outside the house and, as they stepped in the cold air of February, he looked at the spot Hyunjin was pointing at, and almost felt his heart sink in his stomach. Hyunjin smiled again.

“They told me their names and asked me where they could find you. I obviously already knew who they were... I especially already knew him.”

Minho did not have to ask Hyunjin who he was referring to. So he briefly thanked him as he took the few steps that separated him from Chan and Jisung, their smiles growing bigger as he got closer. They were awkwardly standing somewhere not very far from the house, yet not very far from the grove either. Some of the villagers scattered around the house were looking at them sideways, suspiciously, not quite sure as to why two Untamed spellcasters were there in that moment. The two seemed to be ignoring them quite easily.

“You came…” Minho said, his voice tired but grateful, as soon as he stopped in front of the pair.

He was not quite sure if he had imagined it, but it had seemed to him that Chan, who was slowing shifting his weight from one foot to the other, had almost stopped breathing at the sound of his voice. But Jisung, who was standing one step behind Chan, had seemed to catch his strange reaction as well, and was looking at him questioningly. Once he understood Chan was not going to tell a thing, he swiftly moved past him and gave Minho a heavy pot.

“Of course we came,” he just said with a bright smile as Minho took the pot with both of his hands. “I cannot cook, so I asked my mom to make this for you.”

“Thank you, Jisung. It’s been very kind of you, and of your mother,” Minho said, sincerely grateful, and in that moment Chan eventually gathered himself together. He cleared his voice and slightly bowed his head.

“We are really sorry for your loss. Changbin and Felix had to do something at the headquarters, so they could not come with us, but they asked us to offer you their condolences as well.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate that,” Minho said, and he really did.

Chan looked straight into his eyes and, for a moment, Minho felt like he was looking straight into his soul, deeply, and he felt like he could not hold his stare anymore. So he turned his attention to Jisung and noticed he was gazing at a point somewhere in the distance.

“ _Odhrir,_ who is that boy, the one who welcomed us? He is extremely attractive.”

“Jisung!” Chan immediately said and he turned his head towards him with a jerk, his eyes wide open and his voice unusually loud, making Jisung wince.

Minho, for his part, just instinctively smiled, as though he had just been desperately waiting for someone to say something trivial. He let out a small laugh that made Chan visibly relax. He slightly turned his head and saw Hyunjin gracefully walking towards one of the villagers, who had just arrived, to welcome her.

“He is my friend Hyunjin,” he said with a half-smile as he turned his face towards Chan and Jisung again. “A very powerful Psychic indeed.”

“A Psychic?” Chan asked, impressed, momentarily forgetting about glaring at Jisung and laying his eyes on Hyunjin’s slim figure instead. “I had actually never seen one before.”

Minho nodded and glanced in Hyunjin’s direction once again, until a thought suddenly crossed his mind.

“You will be sent in Fráhar in about ten days, am I right?” he asked as he faced Chan and Jisung once more. They both nodded in unison. “I could ask him to meet you all before you leave. Since the situation is still rather uncertain, his abilities will surely help quite a lot.”

“Yes, please. That would be very much appreciated,” Jisung muttered absent-mindedly as he continued to stare at Hyunjin in the distance. Chan tried his best not to roll his eyes.

“It would actually really come in handy,” he just said to Minho as he looked at him again with his gentle eyes.

“It’s settled, then. I will take you to him the day before you leave.”

“That’s perfect,” Chan agreed. He then put a hand on Jisung’s right shoulder. “We are going to go, now. We have kept you enough.”

Minho nodded and then smiled at Jisung, who slightly bowed before waving at him with his small hand. He watched as he turned on his heels and took a few steps towards the grove of fir trees. He then laid his eyes on Chan, who had just slightly backed away. He was looking at him with his big eyes, and they seemed sad, and they seemed loving, and Minho felt his heart tremble. He held the pot Jisung had given him close to his chest and almost caught himself off guard when he opened his mouth to speak.

“You could kiss me goodbye,” he said, his voice so low he thought, for a fleeting moment, Chan had not heard him.

But he had, and that was clear from the way his expression slightly changed and his eyes sparkled with wonderment. He slightly moved his head and carefully looked around, and Minho knew he was trying to understand if some of the villagers were still looking at them. They clearly were.

“It would be inconvenient for you, being kissed by an Untamed spellcaster, don’t you reckon?” Chan eventually said as he looked back at Minho again, his smile kind and gentle, yet rather resigned. He then lowered his voice and slightly moved his head closer to Minho’s. “As much as I would like to, and I would really like to, I am afraid I will have to refrain from doing so.” He pulled back again and Minho could do nothing more than look at him in silence. “Say goodbye to your friends on my behalf.”

Minho just nodded and Chan smiled yet again. Before definitely backing away, he took a small step ahead. He gently grabbed Minho’s hand with his slender fingers and, as he deeply bowed, he brought it to his mouth to leave a small kiss on it, making Minho feel like his guts were suddenly filled with beautiful floating feathers. When he straightened up, he looked at Minho one last time, dearly, before letting go of his hand. He then ran towards Jisung, who was waiting for him near the trees, and went away.

He went away and left Minho with a lot of thoughts to deal with, and a thin thread of hope wrapping around his heart.

🌱

The following days passed by slowly, making Minho feel like he was just walking on a dream.

The day after the funeral, he had received a formal letter from the headquarters informing him that, due to his loss, he had been given bereavement leave. So he spent his days mostly sleeping, never leaving his house, going outside only to take care of his plants and to sit on the small wooden stool near his door during sunsets, to watch the sky and think about nothing.

Seungmin and Jeongin came over almost every afternoon after completing their daily tasks, and they always told Minho they just wanted to keep him company, but their preoccupied stares and uneasy smiles actually gave their real intentions away – making sure he was eating enough, sleeping well and not letting himself go. Minho knew they were trying to keep an eye on him, but he strangely found himself not minding their apprehension that much. He just let them be, without complaining, just like he was doing with everything else. Even when he found himself staring at the empty rocking chair near the fireplace, even during those fleeting times he became conscious of the fact that the cats and him were the only living things still inhabiting the house, which had belonged to the Lees through many generations, he just tried his best to let everything be. Eventually, he reckoned, the pain would have slowly slipped away just like everything else.

The day before he had to take his unit members to Hyunjin’s house, he asked Seungmin to give the letters he had written to inform them where and when to show up to the village messenger. He waited for the next day without doing much, with a slight sense of anticipation filling his guts, making him look forward to seeing his members, his friends, again, and to seeing Chan look at him with his gentle eyes once more.

*

The following afternoon, they all gathered near the large road leading to the beech-maple forest skirting the far-east borders of the village. Felix hugged Minho tight, while Changbin gently rubbed his back, and he felt grateful. Before starting their walk in the forest, Chan gave Minho an encouraging smile and asked him if he was doing well. He said he was, and he actually meant it.

The walk was peaceful and quiet, Minho leading the way and the others following him in silence, their cloaks’ hems floating right above the ground. As they got closer to the small clearing in which Hyunjin’s house stood, the light seeping in through the trees’ branches and leaves became silvery and suffused, as though they were diving deep underwater. The plants growing near the path’s borders were gradually becoming bluish, and their leaves seemed to be covered with the finest sparkling dust. Minho could almost hear the others hold their breath at the sight of what was in front of them, and smiled to himself as he finally caught a glimpse of Hyunjin’s house a few steps away, tiny and mystical, soaked with magic.

As the group got closer, Minho immediately understood Hyunjin was waiting for them, for the front door was ajar and he could clearly smell the scents of incents and burnt smudge sticks coming from inside the house.

“Hyunjin, we’re here,” he announced as he stepped inside and saw the spot his friend usually sat at empty. He slightly moved aside to let the others in, and was about to close the door behind Changbin when the sound of tinkling pearls told him Hyunjin had just emerged from the backroom.

“The amount of magical energy you bring with you is honestly dazzling,” Hyunjin said with a half-smile as he got closer to the table, his voice silky and smooth. “Welcome to my humble house.”

By the silence that followed his words, Minho understood the others just did not know how to react in front of Hyunjin’s almost otherworldly appearance. Some strands of his long hair, that he had tried to pull back in a half bun, were falling graciously on his face, and his eyes, already opaque and cerulean, stood out even more because of the little, vermilion dot he had drawn on his forehead. The tunic and the shawls he was wearing draped over his shoulders and his long limbs, making it seem like his whole body was floating underwater. Chan was the first to gather himself together, and beckoned the others to bow as he bent over.

“Thank you for having us, and sorry for the intrusion,” he quickly said, and his words were followed by the others’ voices as they awkwardly greeted Hyunjin themselves.

“Don’t even mention it!” Hyunjin said happily, clearly pleased with the respect his guests were showing him. Minho barely hold in a laugh as his friend hastily pointed at the stools he had gathered around his table. “Please, take a seat. It is kind of interesting, finally seeing you all together.”

They all sat down and Minho noticed, as he remained standing behind the others, that they all seemed a bit intimidated, and neither of them dared to look at Hyunjin straight into his eyes. Only Jisung seemed like he was not able to keep his eyes off him, moving his head funnily as he tried to keep up with the movements of his eyes. If Hyunjin had noticed, he was not letting it show.

He just quickly started to organize his working space, making room for his wooden board and his tarot cards. As soon as he had finished, he lifted his head and stared at Minho. The color of his irises had started to change almost imperceptibly, a sign that a part of his brain was already seeing something else, receiving signals from elsewhere.

“You are still off work, aren’t you?” he asked, and the others all turned their heads to look at Minho.

“I am,” he just said, slightly shrugging.

“Go home, then. You shouldn’t be working.”

“He is right, you should be resting at home,” Chan chimed in, and as Minho looked at him and saw his face, he almost felt the urge to ask him if he could just stay. “Just go. I’m sure we are in good hands.”

Hyunjin smiled and nodded, and Minho knew he had no choice. So he secured his cloak on his neck and, as they all waved at him, he reached for the entrance again and headed off. The last thing he saw was Chan’s gaze, and he knew he was going to think about his eyes all the way home.

As the group got accustomed to Hyunjin’s rare and unsettling abilities, the afternoon flew by in the blink of an eye. Once he was done reading his cards, interpreting the positions of the pebbles on the board and feeling everyone’s energy by slightly touching their foreheads with his index finger, he informed them their mission was going to go well, and gave them some advice on how to better deal with what was waiting for them in Fráhar. He also advised Jisung not to get carried away as he always did, making him blush as the others loudly laughed at that.

“Also, being my _odhrir_ very stubborn, instead of resting he is now preparing some potions for you to bring during your mission,” he added vaguely, and they all understood he was talking about Minho. “So I reckon one of you has to go and get them before you leave tomorrow morning,” he added, and Chan could not quite say if Hyunjin’s eyes had actually lingered on him for a few seconds before he had turned his head to Jisung, who was just shamelessly staring at him, his ears still red.

Before getting ready to leave, they talked some more, and Jisung and Changbin, not feeling intimidated anymore, flooded Hyunjin with questions about his magical type and his powers. When it started to get dark, Chan had to be the responsible one and remind the others that it really was time to go.

“Could I have a word with you?” Hyunjin asked Chan as they were all standing up from their seats and gathering their cloaks and haversacks.

Chand looked at him with a questioning expression on his face, but nodded in agreement. He told the others to head off without waiting for him, and he almost could sense Jisung’s reluctance to leave Hyunjin’s house that soon. He smiled to himself, and as soon as the others had said their goodbyes and had disappeared beyond the front door, he sat down once again, right in front of Hyunjin, and looked at him intently. The color of his eyes was slowly going back to normal, and Chan did not feel dizzy anymore as he looked at him.

“Please, pay attention to my words,” Hyunjin began and, as a reflex, Chan leaned closer to him as he crossed his arms on the table. “The day my _odhrir_ stole your brooch, he brought it here and asked me to tell him if he could trust you. You didn’t know this, did you?”

“I did not. But I had imagined he had used it in like manner.”

“As expected, you are perceptive,” Hyunjin commented and Chan slightly bowed his head as a sign of modesty. “What I saw that day was not only that he could put his trust in you, but also that something more was bound to happen between you two. So I kept an eye on him during these past months, from afar, and saw his heart grow warmer, and I saw the shield he had built around it slowly crumble into pieces. And I saw your heart as well, I still can see it clearly, and I know it has always been ready.”

Chan remained in silence: he did not need to ask Hyunjin what the last words he had said meant, for he perfectly knew. Hyunjin smiled at him, his eyes disappearing in the shape of two beautiful crescent moons, and Chan inexplicably felt understood. He asked himself if making others feel welcomed and acknowledged was the true power underlying Psychics’ kind of magic and abilities.

“What should I do, then?”

“What I am suggesting is that you go to his house before you leave for your mission. Which leaves you with only one option, going there tonight,” Hyunjin said as he started to set aside his cards and reorganize his table. He then stopped and looked at Chan straight in the eye. “He is ready to accept his fate.”

The words Hyunjin had said floated in the silence of the room, and they almost felt like an omen. As Chan tried to take them in, he breathed deeply, in and out, and that was enough for him to make up his mind.

“Thank you,” he just said, for he was sure Hyunjin was going to grasp every other thought, every other emotion those two words were trying to convey.

“I should be thanking you. Everyone’s fate follows a predestined path, but we still mold it with our hands, every moment of every day, with the people that surround us. He is finally blooming. His heart is now free from resentment and fear, and you helped the beautiful blossoms he was silently carrying within himself finally see the light.”

At that, Chan stood up at once and deeply bowed to Hyunjin who, in response, stood up himself and did the same. When he straightened up again, he showed Chan to the door, and as he leaned on it and they exchanged one final look, Hyunjin pointed at the brooch safely pinned on Chan’s cloak, which he had just thrown over his shoulders.

“Did it belong to your mother?” Hyunjin asked, and Chan’s eyes widened in surprise as he glanced at his brooch himself.

“It did,” he just said, and then smiled as Hyunjin looked at him kindly with his warm, caring eyes.

“Of course it did,” he commented absently, almost like he was talking to himself. He then smiled at Chan one last time before letting him step outside. “We will see each other very soon.”

Chan nodded and waved at him one last time and, as soon as Hyunjin had closed the door, he started to run.

The cold air of the early evening made his skin itch, and he soon started to find it hard to breathe properly. But he kept going, his heart pounding in his throat as Hyunjin’s words swirled inside in head. He soon emerged from the forest, and ran through the alleys as fast as he could, trying to ignore the villagers’ questioning stares. He kept his pace as he climbed up the hill, and he could not contain his smile, a smile of pure, beaming joy, as he caught a glimpse of Minho’s house through the last sparse trees of the groove. A dim, yellow light was coming from inside it, and Chan already felt his guts warming up.

As he arrived in front of the door, he instantly knocked on it, without giving himself the time to even catch his breath. It took Minho a few seconds to open the door, and as he did so and laid his eyes on Chan’s face, his expression changed at once.

“ _Odhrir…_ ” he said hesitantly, as though he could not quite believe Chan was there, right in front of him.

“Can I come in?”

Minho nodded and stepped aside to let Chan in, still looking a bit confused. He closed the door, and Chan slowly reached the center of the room, looking around as he always did, kind of smiling at the sight of the house he had learned to know so well. As he put his haversack on one chair and his eyes landed on the table, he noticed a steaming bowl, still half full, and a spoon abandoned near it.

“I’m sorry I interrupted your dinner,” he said as he turned to face Minho once more.

He had come closer to the table as well, and was fidgeting with his own fingers, absent-mindedly, looking at Chan sideways, as though he was not sure he could look at him. As though he could sense that something in his visit was different, compared to the other times he had come over, but was not sure as to what was about to happen. As though he could instinctively feel it, but could not really bring himself to trust his gut instinct.

“Don’t worry about that. Something happened?”

“No, I… I just needed to see you.”

“Oh,” Minho simply said, taken aback, almost struggling to take in Chan’s tender, small smile. He then slightly shrugged and glanced below at his own body. “Well, here I am.”

Chan’s smile grew bigger and Minho’s heart faltered, and only in that moment he noticed how close they were.

Suddenly, the tension he started to feel between their bodies, real and tangible, suggested him his instinct was not lying. In an instant, his mind went all the way back to the night they had drunk together, and he was sure Chan was looking at him in the same way he had done back then, his eyes filled with yearning and wonderment. And, at once, he felt that his body, just like his heart, was ready. And he knew Chan had noticed as well, for his own body seemed to react to Minho’s newfound awareness. He, in fact, came a little closer, and stretched out his hand to reach for Minho’s face.

As Minho felt Chan’s fingers gently touch his cheek he knew, at once, that very moment was everything he had needed, everything he had been waiting for, and he felt sure, and he felt grounded, and he felt at peace.

“Can I kiss you?” Chan eventually asked as his hand slowly slipped through Minho’s hair and slightly pulled it, making his brain quiver.

“Please,” Minho whispered, his voice almost struggling to leave his lips, but that was enough for Chan to hear him, through his ears and through his heart.

So he closed the distance between them, grabbed his waist, pulled him close and kissed him senselessly.

And so he finally came to know that Minho tasted just like he had always imagined: he tasted like grass, he tasted like wildflowers and rainy mornings. His tenderness, his pride, his stubbornness, Chan could taste all of those things on his tongue, in the quick pants escaping his lips.

“ _Odhrir_ …” Minho managed to say, his breath short and heavy. Chan looked at him with lost eyes, tightening the grip on his waist, feeling a million shivers run down his spine as Minho slightly moved and pressed his groin against his inner thigh. “If you’re not here to have sex with me, you can honestly just leave.”

Chan almost felt his knees give out. He almost felt intimidated as he finally noticed the way Minho was looking at him: eagerly, desperately, lewdly. Another cold shiver ran down his spine and he felt dizzy. He felt delirious.

He took off his cloak at once and kissed Minho again, his whole body shaking as they pushed their way to the stairs, their longing moans filling the silence of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, uh… yeah, ok.


	5. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe I’m already posting the last chapter! I’ll just leave you to it~
> 
> (I'll reread everything to fix mistakes as soon as I have more time!)
> 
> ☾✩☽
> 
> Definitions:  
>  _Odhrir_ : used by males to address an older male they respect/are close to.  
>  _Nir_ : used by males to address an older woman they respect/are close to.  
>  _Juju_ : “grandma” in Alchemists’ mother tongue.  
>  _Hez_ : Yfibhor’s currency.

When Minho opened his eyes, his room was still dark. The only light source was the little oil lamp on his chest of drawers, and the sky, from what he could see as he glanced at the window, was of the shade of blue that always preceded dawn. He closed his eyes and rubbed them slowly, feeling rather tired because of how little he had slept. When he opened them again, he caught sight of his clothes messily scattered on the floor. He pulled the blanket closer to his chest, a slight sense of embarrassment making his ears itch, and slowly turned his head. He knew Chan was still there, lying beside him – he could feel his body’s warmness under the blanket and hear his soft breaths fill the silence of the room – but he just needed to see him with his own eyes. And, in fact, there he was, his big brown eyes sparkling in the dark, his skin so white it almost glowed like the first snow of winter.

Seeing he was awake, Minho rolled over, made himself comfortable and then lied perfectly still, his hand under the pillow and his face a few inches away from Chan’s. Chan just looked back at him with a tender smile on his lips, and an unbearable amount of affection in his eyes. Minho was almost caught off guard when he leaned in and left a small kiss on his temple, making him blush ever so slightly.

“Haven’t slept?” Minho eventually managed to say, hiding the bottom half of his face under the blanket as Chan laid his head on the pillow again.

“I kind of dozed off, sometime in the night, but that was it. You kind of talk in your sleep, did you know?”

Minho shook his head, dumbfounded, and Chan let out a little laugh that made Minho’s heart flutter. He looked at Chan’s face and he could clearly see, from his eyes, that he really had not slept that much.

“Are you worried about something?” he asked, but Chan shook his head straight away.

“I am not. I feel rather at peace.”

“I actually do as well,” Minho said after a moment of silence, and he felt comfortable as he admitted it. He felt warm, and he felt safe.

Chan was still smiling at him, his eyes almost disappearing behind his lids. When his expression relaxed, Minho understood he was suddenly thinking about something. From the movements of his eyes, and from the way he had started to bite the inside of his mouth, it seemed to Minho that he was struggling to find a way to put whatever he was thinking about into words.

“Are you… Is your, you know…” Chan eventually tried to say, awkwardly gesticulating towards Minho’s body, and Minho blinked repeatedly, a questioning expression on his face. Then Chan definitely shut his mouth, unable to say whatever he was trying to say out loud, and just resorted to directly indicating Minho’s backside with his hand. Minho almost let out a small gasp as he understood what Chan was trying to ask him.

“I’m feeling well, everything’s fine,” he hastily said, almost stuttering as he tried his best to overcome how shy the idea of openly talking about that, and the idea of Chan being genuinely concerned about his body, was making him feel. “I… you’ve actually been really gentle. It felt good, more than good. I felt good. I truly did.”

Chan’s small smile appeared again, making his face beam up once more, and he reached for Minho’s face with one hand, took a strand of his hair, and gently tucked it behind his ear. That gesture alone made Minho go straight back to the first time Chan had done the same, inside the vault of the house, and at once he felt his heart clench.

“Did Hyunjin tell you something about the time I stole your brooch?” he asked all of a sudden.

“He did,” Chan confirmed as he withdrew his hand and adjusted his head on the pillow once again.

“That day, he read something on one of his boards, I really don’t know how all of that works, and then he asked me to pick one of his tarot cards,” Minho stopped and averted his eyes, suddenly feeling insecure about what he was about to tell Chan. He gave himself a moment to rethink the words he wanted to say, and as he looked again into Chan’s eyes, always so kind, he knew he could do it. “I picked The Lovers. In that moment, I didn’t really know what that meant, or what that could have meant. But lately, when I think about the moment Hyunjin showed me the card, I tell myself I already knew my life was going to change because of you. Maybe I have been knowing from the moment you set foot inside my house for the first time.”

A comforting silence fell between them again. Minho looked at Chan, averting his gaze from time to time, but always coming back at staring straight at him, as though his presence alone was magnetically requiring all of his undivided attention. He tried to understand what he was thinking about, but all he could see on his face was a beaming serenity, a plain expression of pure calmness.

“And are we, now?” Chan eventually asked, and Minho just looked back at him, confused. “Are we lovers?”

“You want us to be?”

“It would be a honor, being your lover.”

Chan’s eyes seemed sincere, realer than anything Minho had ever seen, and he could not help but stare at them, once again mesmerized, as though they were the gate to a world he had never really seen before. Almost on instinct, he stretched out his hand and gently touched Chan’s left eyebrow and cheekbone with the tips of his fingers, tracing the shape of the bones around his eye.

“I hope you mean it,” he said absently, following his fingers’ movements with his eyes, trying to take in the details on Chan’s face as much as he could.

“I’ve always meant every word I’ve told you,” Chan said as he grabbed Minho’s small hand and brought it to his lips to kiss it.

He then came closer, in need of more contact, and touched Minho’s chest, and then kissed every inch of his face. And Minho really felt loved, in a way he had never felt before. He slightly leaned in himself, hiding his face out of shyness, and Chan understood he wanted to be hugged, so he wrapped his arms around his body and held him tight. Minho closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of Chan’s skin, and they just stayed like that as the night drifted away, waiting for daylight to come.

And, as though he had been waiting for a moment like that to finally let himself be vulnerable and let go of everything he was holding inside, Minho eventually allowed himself to cry in Chan’s arms, and Chan just let him without saying a word. He held him closer and brushed his hair with his fingers, his touch so gentle Minho almost felt his worries slip away from his weary mind in the bat of an eye. And, in a matter of minutes, he was sleeping again.

When the bedroom was completely bathed with the light coming through the window, Chan woke Minho up again, and said it really was time for him to go. Minho just nodded, still half asleep, and they both got out of bed to get dressed. Before Chan could grab his own clothes from the floor, Minho stopped him and gave him some clean clothes for him to wear during the journey. Then, as Chan was busy getting dressed, he put some other trousers and tunics in a haversack, which he gave to him as soon as he was completely dressed. Chan looked at Minho with lost eyes.

“I filled it with spare clothes for the days to come, so you don’t always have to worry about finding a way to wash what you are wearing,” Minho just mumbled, his eyes still half closed and his voice hoarse, as he finished getting dressed himself. “Also, leave your dirty clothes here, I will wash them and give them back once you return.”

Chan thanked him quietly, a surprised expression still lingering on his face, and then just smiled brightly at the sight of Minho groggily scuffing his feet as he walked towards the door.

As they arrived downstairs, Chan wore his cloak and put both his own haversack and the one Minho had given him on his shoulder. As they reached for the front door, Minho grabbed a small bundle he had prepared the afternoon before and gave it to Chan, who immediately remembered Hyunjin’s words as Minho briefly explained which potions he had prepared for them. Chan thanked him once more, and then let him open the door.

He took one step outside and turned around, and as he saw Minho’s pretty eyes look back at him so sadly, he just abandoned everything on the ground and closed the distance between them once more to hug him one last time.

He felt his heart sink in his stomach as Minho immediately hugged him back, clinging to his cloak as though his life depended on it. They stayed still for some moments, inhaling the cold air of the morning, aware of nothing more than each other’s flesh and bones.

“I feel really lucky, you know?” Chan whispered in Minho’s ear, and Minho held his breath as he felt Chan’s heartbeat against his. “Being alive right now, having you in my arms like this.”

Minho smiled in the hug, and calmness filled his heart. When they both felt ready to let go, Minho just took a step back and leaned on the doorframe. He watched Chan take everything again from the ground, and he watched him wave one last time, smile, take a few steps backwards, towards the trees.

“Make sure you come back,” Minho said aloud, and Chan nodded as his smile grew bigger. He eventually turned to face the grove, and when Minho was sure he could not hear him anymore, he let out a deep breath and placed one hand on his heart. “I cannot afford losing you as well.”

🌱

March had come and had brought beautiful sunny days, full of a light so shiny it almost seemed to bite the skin.

Some days after his unit’s departure, Minho’s bereavement leave officially came to an end and, one morning, a messenger came to his house and informed him he had been summoned to the superintendent’s office. Not knowing what to expect, he simply wore his cloak and headed to the village, his pace steady and his mind empty. The walk was rather quiet, and as he strolled across the alleys, some villagers greeted him and asked him how he was doing. He could almost see pity in the way they looked at him – the last of the Lees, just a young adult left without his roots –, but he tried to convince himself he was just imagining it.

As he arrived at the headquarters, the sentries let him in without sparing him a glance, just like they had done the time he had gone there with Chan. Inside the building as well, the spellcasters who passed him by ignored him altogether, and that made him feel somewhat safe – being different but not being reminded he was, not completely fitting in but seemingly doing so.

Once he arrived in front of the office, he knocked on the door and a voice immediately told him to go inside, and so he did. Before his eyes, three men sitting in front of the superintendent’s table were looking at him, their faces inexpressive. Chan’s father, from the other side of his desk, just glanced at him before pointing at the only vacant chair. Minho bowed and hastily reached for his seat, four heads following his every movement. As soon as he sat down, Chan’s father cleared his throat and looked straight into his eyes.

“As the only member of Chan’s unit who is currently here in the village, you have been summoned here to discuss the recent developments of the situation in Fráhar. These…” and he quickly glanced at the three other men, “are the superintendents of the other units that are working on this mission.”

Minho bowed his head to greet each of the men, and they all reciprocated. They all looked quite old, and the aura they seemed to emanate was intense and vibrant. Chan’s father cleared his throat once more, reclaiming the others’ attention.

“We have come to know that the situation in Fráhar is more critical than what we had expected. Small riots break out daily, especially in the immediate periphery of the citadel, where the revolutionary group has been more able to impose itself and proselytize. We still do not know how involved we are going to get, but our first priority remains, of course, our village’s safety. Our units, Chan’s unit in particular, is now busy rendering assistance to Fráhar’s governors. They are still working on how to make contact with the rioters’ leaders, who were identified not long ago.”

“Are Chan and the others safe?” Minho asked all of a sudden, four pair of eyes darting on him, his apprehension ill-concealed. “The last time they went there, Chan got jinxed.”

“They are safe,” Chan’s father said after a moment of silence, in which it had seemed he had been pondering over something, his piercing eyes staring straight at Minho. “Conditions are now different from the last time they went there. They knew what to expect before leaving, they know what to do now that they are there. Other units are there to back them up, and I am positive that you have provided them with potions to protect them and prevent any type of damage.”

“I have.”

“Then, you needn’t fret,” Chan’s father said curtly before grabbing a parchment and beginning to discuss the message written on it, come from Fráhar that very morning.

The rest of the meeting was concise. The other superintendents shared the information their subordinates had gathered, and they all discussed the plan of action for the units assigned to the mission to follow. They wrote a reply to the message arrived from Fráhar, a brief summary of what had just been deliberated, and a messenger was summoned and instructed on what to do. As he left the room, the three men who had been sitting next to Minho got up almost in unison, ready to leave, and Minho was about to do the same when Chan’s father gestured for him to remain still.

“Let me have a word with you,” he said plainly, and Minho could do nothing more than nod. They remained in silence until the three men had disappeared behind the door and had closed it again. At that, Chan’s father looked straight at Minho again, his sharp eyes unfathomable. “Are you and my son in a… personal relationship?”

Minho blinked repeatedly, taken aback. He tried to comprehend the nature of that question, his lips pursed and his brow slightly furrowed, his eyes roaming over the man’s face in search of something. He found nothing more than an expression of composed anticipation.

“All the members of our unit are friends, which means all of our relationships are personal relationships,” he eventually said, but his answer seemed not to satisfy Chan’s father, who raised his brows and slightly shook his head.

“Let me be more explicit,” he said as he looked down at his clasped hands. He remained silent for a moment, and then lifted his head again. “Are you and my son having a love affair?”

Minho’s mouth fell agape, but he soon closed it, and he could not help but let out a half laugh, out of both mild nervousness and annoyance.

“I am afraid it is not my place to talk to you about this, sir,” he simply said, his tone quite stern. A thought then crossed his mind, and he could not help but let it out. “If what is bothering you, however, is the way I have obtained my position in the unit, I can assure you I was offered the job because I am an excellent mage. Not because of the relationship your son and I have, whatever that might be. I am, after all, the youngest of the Lees, and the sage’s grandson.”

“That is not what is bothering me,” the man said after a moment of silence. He was still looking at Minho, but he was looking at him with a much more intrigued expression plastered on his face. It seemed like he was not expecting such an answer, neither his interlocutor’s sudden remark. Nevertheless, he sighed and his whole posture seemed to loosen up the slightest bit. “I am sorry for your loss. The village as a whole has mourned your grandmother’s death.”

“Thank you.”

“You may go,” he eventually said, and Minho got up instantly. He bowed and almost rushed towards the door, but as soon as his hand gripped the doorknob, Chan’s father added: “I care about my son. It might not seem like it, but I do. This was the reason behind my question.”

Minho turned his head the slightest bit, enough for him to glance at the man’s eyes one last time, and for the first time he seemed to recognize, in them, the eyes of a father. He walked out the door and did not give that impression a second thought.

His walk back home was quite calm: Minho felt inexplicably light. He strolled through the alleys with his mind wandering somewhere else, feeling like his ankles had grown little wings. He reached the grove and, instead of heading home, he changed direction and headed towards the clearing where his grandmother had been buried. He picked some flowers, some of which suggested him spring really was about to come, and laced them with a thin but strong stem, arranging a little bouquet. As he reached the clearing, he went straight to the gravestone, and lightly caressed it as he crouched down to place the flowers in front of the stone. He got on his feet again, his thoughts down memory lane, his body still in the cold breeze of March.

A few minutes had passed when he heard someone coming closer from behind, their steps so light they almost got lost in the sound of the wind.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Minho heard, and he smiled as he saw, from the corner of his eye, Seungmin stop next to him.

“I wanted to bring her flowers before heading back home.”

“She surely likes them,” Seungmin commented, smiling at the sight of the little bouquet near the gravestone. He then turned his head towards his friend. “How are you doing?”

“I have to say, I’m doing fine,” Minho said after pondering over Seungmin’s question. “These days are quite calm. What about you?”

“I’m fine as well. Not a lot to do, today.”

Seungmin smiled at Minho, who had glanced at him briefly, and then looked around, as if a thought had suddenly pushed him to do so.

“Why have you decided to bury her here?” he asked as he looked at the headstone once more. “The other sages have been buried in the village cemetery.”

“My parents are buried here as well,” Minho said, and Seungmin could not hide his surprise. “It was quite common for people who died during the war or the civil war to be buried without headstones, since they were usually ravaged, but they are here. This place is near my house, and I just wanted _juju_ to be with my parents. Resting under the same ground, surrounded by the same trees...”

Seungmin nodded and said nothing more, keeping his head low, and Minho felt grateful for his presence, always respectful and sincere. He looked at Seungmin’s side profile and felt the urge to connect with him even more, share his placid turmoil, be welcomed by a mind so open, so accepting, never pretentious.

“Do you remember Chan, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Seungmin immediately said, raising his head at once, looking at Minho attentively. Minho remained silent, averting his eyes for a moment, glancing at the trees in the near distance.

“I think I might be falling for him,” he simply stated, almost like he was admitting that more to himself than to his friend. Seungmin, on the other hand, just smiled, a smile so meek yet so bright.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said, and he truly meant it.

Minho looked at him lean towards the gravestone and touch it with the tips of his fingers, his smile still on his face. And that moment, that single instant, felt like a chapter coming to an end, and it felt like an opening, and everything felt like life really was immense.

🌱

“My dear, dear boy!”

The innkeeper leaned on the counter to take Minho’s face with both of her hands. She shook him gently, motherly, making him let out an awkward laugh as he let her do so. When she let him go, he straightened up again, still rather flustered, and it took him a moment to remember he had brought something to give her. So he rummaged in his haversack until he pulled out a small glass vial, and she eyed it curiously as he put it on the wooden surface of the counter.

“I met your husband two days ago, _nir_. He told me your youngest son has caught a bad cold again, so I prepared something to help him get better. A spoonful after lunch and one after dinner, tomorrow, should be enough.”

Her pupils dilated, her heart so easily touched by kindness. She grabbed the vial and looked at Minho gently, saying more with her eyes than she could have said through words.

“You truly are a blessing,” she whispered, and without saying anything else she let the vial slip in her apron’s front pocket and hastily prepared something to drink for him. She poured the mixture in a large tankard and handed it to him with a smile. “It’s on the house. Go sit with your friends, they are already here.”

So Minho grabbed the tankard, heavy and oddly warm, and searched for the table Hyunjin, Seungmin and Jeongin were sitting at. He spotted it immediately, Hyunjin’s long, fair air unmistakable in a sea of dark-haired heads, and walked up to them with a light heart, the smell of his brew reminding him of nights spent celebrating and carefree times.

“I bet you didn’t have to pay a single _hez_ ,” Seungmin said as soon as Minho abandoned himself on a chair. Minho shook his head, visibly amused at the sight of his friend sneering. “I knew it! She didn’t make Hyunjin pay either. You should have seen her when we walked through the door and she saw him.”

“It was a bit embarrassing,” Jeongin sighed, making himself small on his chair, as though the memory of that moment actually unsettled him.

“That’s what being otherworldly beautiful entails,” Minho laughed as he glanced at Hyunjin, who was just gazing about with his head resting on his hand, apparently lost in thought, his fingers grazing the rim of his glass.

“Your friends should be here in a short while, shouldn’t they?” Seungmin asked Minho, determined to lead the conversation elsewhere.

Minho nodded. Some days before, he had received a letter from Chan. He had unfolded it impatiently, his fingers almost trembling, and had read the words written in that beautiful handwriting while holding his breath, feeling a kind of elation he had never really felt before. The letter, short and sweet, informed him the unit was bound to return to the village on the first day of Yfibhor’s spring celebrations, and invited him to meet all together at the inn that very night. In the last couple of lines, Chan had written that they all missed him. That he was thinking about him plenty and could not wait to see him again. Minho had read the letter every following night before going to bed, at the dim light of the oil lamp in his room, and was sure he could by then recite it by heart.

The door of the inn opened soon after Seungmin’s question, and it only took a little effort for Jisung and Felix to push their way through the crowd of patrons, their bodies slim and nimble, and reach the table. They smiled brightly despite their obvious tiredness, and Minho almost winced when he realized they were standing right behind him.

“We’re back, _odhrir_!” Jisung all but shouted in Minho’s ear as they both looped their arms around him.

Minho feigned annoyance, but still kept their arms close to his chest, happy to see them again, until they both pulled back and took their seats. They introduced themselves to Seungmin and Jeongin, sharing big smiles as they came to know they were all very close in age.

“And here I thought you had no friends,” Changbin said as he reached the table himself, his movements slow as usual, feigning surprise and patting Minho’s back.

“Hasn’t anyone kidnapped you, in Fráhar?”

“I’m afraid not,” Changbin smiled. He then sat next to Seungmin, and shook both his and Jeongin’s hand.

Minho looked at them with a pretty kind of happiness suddenly filling his heart, feeling warm and safe. He then noticed the only empty chair was the one on his right, and as soon as realization hit him, Chan appeared in his line of vision, bringing four tankards full to the brim. He put them on the table, Changbin swiftly handing them out, introduced himself to Seungmin and Jeongin, and finally abandoned himself on the chair, his eyes landing on Minho’s at once.

And that was enough for him to forget everything else. To feel like there had not been a past, like there was not going to be a future, like the world really did end beyond the inn’s threshold.

“Hi,” Chan murmured, his voice so low and tired, yet pretty and enchanting, as though it came straight from Minho’s fondest dreams.

“Welcome back,” Minho just said, and brought his tankard to his mouth to hide his face, feeling suddenly shy, unable to say much else. He had almost forgotten how flustering the sight of Chan had become to him.

The evening flew by between chit-chats and laughters, friendly mocks and a lot of emptied tankards. Just like those encounters that happen once in a lifetime, they were all getting along as though they had been knowing each other since a past life, or in a life led in a different dimension.

When most of them were already quite tipsy, Minho caught a glimpse of Jisung coming closer to Hyunjin, who smiled at him and let his index finger slide on the other’s nose, his eyes changing color to a shade of pink Minho had never seen before. He smiled to himself, letting his thoughts wander somewhere else, lost in his own headspace, until he felt a touch on his shoulder, followed by a pair of lips brushing his ear.

“Can I come over, tonight?” Chan asked in a whisper.

Minho slightly pulled away, just enough to see the way Chan was looking at him, his head tilted and his eyes heavy-lidded, sparkling, mesmerizing, and he felt his heart drop in his guts, as though it had been pulled by an invisible thread. He nodded, content, and Chan caressed his cheek with his thumb, an affectionate gesture that made Minho freeze and turned his brains to mush. Chan, instead, just sat straight again and joined an animated conversation between Changbin and Seungmin, which had been going on for quite some time. From time to time, Minho could feel Chan’s leg brush his, and he could not quite say how many of those touches were unintentional. He found himself hoping none of them was.

They left the inn only when it emptied out and was about to close. After bowing politely to the innkeeper, who waved Hyunjin and Minho off with particular rapture, they all gathered right outside the inn to say their goodbyes, promising each other they were going to meet all together again soon. Seungmin and Jeongin were the last to head off, and as soon as their frames were swallowed by the night mist, Minho glanced at Chan and they both whirled back around, setting out for the hill.

As they strolled through the alleys, dark and familiar, Chan instinctively searched for Minho’s hand. When he found it, he held it gently, as if it was something precious and invaluable, and the intimacy of his touch was made of longing nights and sighs of the heart. As they walked among the trees, Minho held Chan’s hand tight, and found himself thinking that whatever the feeling growing in his heart was, whatever it entailed, he was going to keep it close to him for a lifetime.

With the house finally in sight, they both picked up their pace on impulse, impatience making their bodies twitch, move faster. And as soon as they had gotten inside and Chan had closed the door, they were kissing, eagerly and clumsily, hands all over each other. The smell of their bodies, heated up and sweaty, started to make Minho’s head spin, a lovely thrill in his brain, blurring his vision.

“You should come live here,” he drawled, panting for air, paying little attention to his own words as he removed Chan’s cloak and let it fall to the ground.

“What?” Chan asked, his eyes wide open, out of breath himself, holding his hands up as Minho’s fingers roamed over his body, searching for other laces to unlace.

“Never mind. I reckon I’ve just felt kind of lonely.”

“You’ve only caught me off guard,” Chan almost cut Minho off, trying to make him understand he did not have to justify himself. He helped him get rid of his own cloak and a sparkle of glee made his eyes glow in the dark. “We’ll talk about this,” he said, and then he grabbed Minho’s hips, impatient, and closed the distance between their bodies again, making him hold on to his neck not to lose balance. “I missed you so much.”

Minho smiled as Chan left slow kisses on his neck, his skin twitching under his touch, and stopped him once more as he felt his fingers slide under his tunic, graze his stomach, aim for his groin.

“Upstairs,” he just said as he pulled back and took Chan’s hand in his.

He led him, his insides trembling at the thought of having him in his house again, treading up those very stairs, filling so many different kinds of emptiness.

As they arrived in his room, he let go of Chan’s hand and swiftly started to disrobe, the light coming from the oil lamp dimly illuminating his body, Chan staring at him bewitched, unable to avert his eyes.

“Can you prepare me?” Minho asked, suddenly lifting his head to look at Chan, strands of his own hair falling in his eyes, his hands busy getting himself out of his pants.

Bereft of speech, Chan remained still, surprised. The first time, Minho had not let Chan help him prepare himself: he had done it alone, clumsily and in a rush, bashful and aroused.

He smiled fondly as he watched Minho sit on the bed and look at him, his eyes big and expecting, innocent yet enticing, and with a single nod he agreed, coming closer and leaning in to finally touch his body again.

🌱

March was flowing away like blithe spirals of water.

On the last day of Yfibhor’s spring celebrations, Minho and Chan were in the main room of Chan’s house, sitting on the floor, with burlap sacks waiting to be filled and Chan’s belongings scattered all around them. The smell of the ocean was strong and sweet, and the light of the late morning, finally coming through a thick layer of mist, was bathing the house beautifully.

The day after they had met again, they had talked about living together while lying in Minho’s bed, buried under warm blankets, their limbs tangled and heavy, their eyes still swollen from sleep, their hair messy. After talking it out, they had simply decided that they were going to give it a try without many expectations, just like two persons who were going to give up their different kinds of solitude to keep each other company. And so they had kissed and they had touched, and Minho had let himself be embraced for hours, falling in and out of sleep, and more irreparably in love at the sight of Chan’s face every time he had opened his eyes again.

And there Minho was, sorting out the belongings Chan had decided to move first from his house to Minho’s. As he set aside two large, worn-out tomes full of spells and fiery magic, a canvas drew his attention. He grabbed it with both of his hands and looked at the woman painted on it, her hair long and elegant, the gentleness of her eyes perceptible through the brush strokes.

“Who is she?” Minho asked absent-mindedly, and Chan glanced at him.

“My mother,” he said, smiling at the sight of Minho touching the painting so delicately. If he had looked back at Chan, he would have seen a veil of aching sadness darken his eyes. “She died some years ago. She was very ill.”

At that, Minho turned his head, but Chan had already gone back to tucking a pile of clothes in a sack, his face not visible anymore. Minho studied his movements, and felt something like melancholy and affection fill his heart, so irremediably touched by every little thing that concerned the man before him.

“I’m sorry to hear that. She was very beautiful,” and he looked at the painting again, his voice soft and mellow. “You must have gotten it from her.”

Chan felt his cheeks heat up at that remark, let out so casually, and was grateful Minho could not see his face. He tried to focus on folding some pants, but his thoughts went elsewhere, down the trail of memories related to his mother, and he glanced at Minho again when a sudden realization came to him.

“You… You have never told me about your parents.”

Minho’s body stiffened under the weight of those words. He let them fall in the silence, knowing Chan would have understood him taking his time, and pondered over what to say. He pondered over how to answer without unveiling the pain he had felt growing up. The resentment, the anger, the fear.

“My father died during the war, in one of the southern lands of Afjár,” Minho finally said, carefully placing the painting in a sack, on top of two piles of books. His throat had somewhat dried out. “We found out he had passed away only when the bodies of the fallen were brought back in Yfibhor. And my mother...” another pause, in which Chan glanced at him and only saw his back, hunched over the sack he was filling. “My mother was killed during the civil war. By Untamed spellcasters. They knew she was a non-holder, they were just looking for my grandmother, but… well, that’s how it went,” he concluded, his tone unexpectedly plain and steady.

Silence fell upon them once more. Chan, whose body was by then facing Minho’s completely, just looked at his back, at his hands going back to work, and felt a sorrow so desolate, and a sense of shame he had already felt before, but it felt stronger, and uglier, yet horribly familiar.

“I’m truly sorry,” he eventually said, his heart on his sleeve, and he saw Minho shake his head.

“Don’t be. Those were hard times, and they have been hard for a lot of families. Not only mine.”

The words left Minho’s mouth and, for a moment, they distracted him from everything else. He stared at the wall in front of him, dumbfounded, thinking about them over and over, almost obsessively, until he heard a voice in his head telling him the circle was finally closing, and an era of his life was finally coming to an end. He was, indeed, free. Free from a lot of things that had been weighing him down for so, so long.

Lost in his own headspace, he had not noticed Chan had stood up and had come closer to him, tiptoeing his way through the things on the floor. Minho flinched when he saw him drop on his knees before him, quietly grab the books in his hands to put them aside, lean in, pull him in his arms and embrace him gently.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Chan whispered as he held Minho closer, tighter, abandoning his head on his shoulder. “I’ll make up for my kin’s mistakes.”

Minho hid his face in the crook of Chan’s neck, his heart beating fast against Chan’s, feeling so many emotions at once, unable to tell him he already had.

They stayed like that for a while, listening to the ocean in the distance, the stunning sound of nature celebrating life. Before letting him go, Chan kissed Minho’s eyes, and then his nose and his cheeks, making him laugh shyly. He then stood up again to go back to where he had been sitting.

“Come on, let’s pack what’s left and let’s head back to the village, or else we’ll make the others wait.”

Minho nodded and they soon filled the remaining sacks, sharing small stories about growing up in Yfibhor and learning magic. They eventually left the house at lunchtime, the floor finally completely visible again, and they set off after throwing the sacks in the wheelbarrows they had borrowed from one on Minho’s acquaintances.

The house was already not visible anymore, the sounds of the ocean hardly audible over those of the leaves, when Chan realized what moving his belongings actually entailed. His arms were already sore from trying to keep the wheelbarrow balanced on the ground, uneven and stony. Minho was walking a little faster than him, leading the way, his steps light and agile.

“Are we rushing things?” Chan asked, unable to keep his thoughts to himself. He saw Minho shrug, his cloak swinging gracefully at the movement.

“Mayhap. Yet, times are uncertain: for all we know, we soon might be gone. So, perhaps, there’s no point in waiting. In any event, you still need to rent out your house. We have to talk with the others, and you have to talk with your father,” at that, Chan heaved a silent sigh. “We can say that, for now, we are just moving some of your belongings from your house to mine.”

“And what if it doesn’t go well?”

“If it doesn’t go well, I’ll have yet another reason to despise Untamed spellcasters,” Minho said casually, a smile audible in the tone of his voice. Chan smiled as well, feeling somewhat lighter at that remark. Minho then turned serious once more, that kind of seriousness that denoted his way of facing life problems, that seriousness that, far from being stiff, had everything to do with his practical, down-to-earth mentality. “Do not worry about that, _odhrir_. We’ll just sort things out as they go.”

Unsurprisingly, Chan found himself satisfied with the answer.

*

After leaving Chan’s belongings in Minho’s bedroom, they flew out of the house, headed to the village center. Seasonal hawkers were in the village for spring celebrations, and everything in Yfibhor was festive and gladsome, and the alleys overflowed with floral installations and beautifully decorated lanterns.

When they emerged from the grove of fir trees, the villagers’ loud voices welcomed them from a distance, and Chan could almost sense the happiness radiating from Minho’s body as he picked up his pace and tightened his grip around the wicker basket he had brought with him, full of potion bottles and vials. They soon reached the main road, and all of the colors and scents coming from the stalls were making it seem like they had entered another world, vibrant and lively.

As they strolled down the road, Minho’s eyes wandering excitedly from one stall to the other, Chan noticed some villagers were looking at them sideways. Some others were just staring at them out of curiosity. The news that the younger of the Lees had been hired by Untamed spellcasters and was working in one of their units had spread quite fast, but some of the villagers still did not seem to believe it, and some others simply did not look kindly on it. Minho, however, remained mostly unbothered by other people’s ill-concealed opinions and Chan, on his part, just knew – as he had always known – that it was a little step towards something bigger, towards the beginning of a new chapter in Yfibhor’s history, a small drop in the sea of legends that, throughout the centuries to come, were going to be handed down to the new generations.

They soon found Changbin, Jisung and Felix at the back of a little crowd gathered around a stall, staring at the hawker showing off a kind of rare sprouts that did not grow in Yfibhor. Minho almost did not notice that Hyunjin was there with them as well. He came closer and Hyunjin smiled at him as soon as he saw him.

“I thought you were only going to come over tonight. It’s rare to see you around the village.”

“I just thought it could do me good, this festive atmosphere,” Hyunjin said and it seemed to Minho that, for a split second, he had laid his eyes on Jisung – who was standing on his toes, trying his best to see the stall above the other villagers’ heads – before looking at Minho again. “I sense this beaming happiness coming from all of these people around us, and it’s kind of recharging my energy. I like it.”

Minho noticed, in fact, that the color of Hyunjin’s eyes was transparent and wavy, as though something incorporeal was flowing behind his irises. They exchanged a few other words, Chan standing on Minho’s left, his presence quiet and reassuring, until Minho felt someone tug on his cloak from behind.

As he turned, he saw the innkeeper’s younger son holding out his arms, as though he wanted to be picked up. Minho smiled and bent over to do so, and saw the woman come closer with her older daughter at her heels as he straightened up again and held the kid close. Chan and Hyunjin turned as well, and Hyunjin started to make faces at the kid, trying to get his attention, and made Minho and Chan laugh as he was blatantly ignored.

“Are you feeling better, now?” Minho asked the kid as he held him and brushed his bangs from his forehead with his free hand. He nodded and hid his face behind his little hands, making Minho smile as he stroked his back gently.

“He is,” the mother chimed in as she stopped in front of them, and Minho handed her the kid. “He is too shy to say it out loud, but he wanted to thank you. Your potion has helped a whole lot.”

Minho’s smile grew bigger as he patted the kid’s shoulder, his head tilted to look at his small, round face, still half-hidden behind his hands. Chan found himself staring at the scene absently, enraptured by the graciousness and the gentleness that so naturally shone through Minho’s posture and actions, as though the true nature of his soul was, in that moment, showing on his whole body. Chan stared and felt hopelessly captivated, something so similar to devotion filling his eyes.

They said goodbye to the family and then beckoned Changbin, Jisung and Felix to go with them as they started walking again. Minho traded some of the potions he had brought with him with roots and minerals, and Felix took him by the arm and showered him with questions about his purchases, his eyes sparkling at the sight of the goods in Minho’s basket.

When Seungmin and Jeongin finally arrived, the sun was already setting, and some hawkers had already started to repack their products. They all walked down the main road one last time before setting off to Minho’s house, Hyunjin and Seungmin leading the way, hopping and running and pulling on the others’ arms to make them walk faster. Minho and Chan looked at them contentedly from the back, their hands brushing as they walked side by side at a steady pace.

When they arrived at the house, they all ran inside as soon as Minho unlocked the door, and they all helped light up the candles and the lanterns in the dinette, as well as the fire in the fireplace, while Minho wore his apron and started to cook the traditional stew all the villagers used to cook during spring celebrations.

Minho had never heard so many voices fill the silence of his house, nor seen it become so full and lively because of the presence of so many people at once. The fire was merrily crackling in the fireplace and the lanterns were illuminating every corner of the room. The cats, surprised by the humans they had never seen before, had gathered around Jeongin, who was sitting on the floor near the fireplace and was trying to convince them to sniff Felix’s hand. When one of them finally did, Felix could not contain his happiness and he called out the others to see. But he was soon distracted by Jisung, who had dragged a chair in the center of the room, the wine he was drinking threatening to spill from his glass, and was clumsily trying to climb on it. Minho glanced at him, still stirring the stew, and started to laugh as he reenacted the way Changbin had, in a burst of pride, defended Yfibhor’s honor during the unit’s encounter with the heads of the revolutionary group of Fráhar.

“ _Not only are you threatening your own village’s safety, you also have dared to disrespect one of the most powerful villages in_ _Afjár! Have you got any idea of what you have gotten yourself into?_ ” he almost screamed, the words followed by the others clapping and roaring with laughter, and a very embarrassed Changbin trying to explain himself and miserably failing in doing so. Jisung just ignored him and continued his skit, starting to mock Chan as well, and they all laughed and laughed, and they could not seem to stop even when Jisung had decided he had had enough of making a fool out of himself and had leapt off the chair. From there, their voices just remained loud and happy, and Minho could feel all the sounds around him, festive and merry, penetrate his skin and set deep inside his bones.

As soon as he turned off the stove, Chan was beside him with a pile of bowls in his hands. Minho almost leaned in to leave a kiss on his lips, but immediately pulled back as he heard the others burst out laughing again for something Jisung had just said, and he offered him a small smile instead.

“Your friends are acting strangely around me,” Chan told him in a whisper as he helped him pour the stew in the bowls.

“Strangely as in...?”

“Can’t really say. Hyunjin keeps glancing at me,” Chan gave the first bowls to Felix for him to pass them out. He came closer again and, if possible, he lowered his voice even more. “While Seungmin looks like he is studying me, but when I catch him staring, he just smiles politely. Jeongin can’t even look at me in the eyes without… blushing.”

Minho let out a small laugh that, for some reason, Chan felt tinkle deep down his stomach. He helped him tilt the pot to fill the last bowls.

“They must have been talking about us. They know. I am positive Hyunjin can even feel that some of your belongings are now upstairs. I bet the others know too. They are just being polite, waiting for us to tell them ourselves.”

All the bowls, aside from theirs, had been handed out, so Minho just took off his apron, folded it carefully, and then stood still to look back at Chan, everything in his posture and his attitude suggesting, once again, the presence of a softness so gracious yet so hopelessly captivating, within him, that attracted Chan very much so.

“We will soon.”

“Yes, we will,” Minho agreed with a smile, one of those that made his cheekbones full and his eyes glimmer behind his eyelids. Chan gently tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear and Minho briefly leaned into his touch before he withdrew his hand.

They ate and talked, sitting in circle on the floor, celebrating spring by sharing stories and legends about the village and their ancestors’ deeds and adventurous quests. After finishing the stew, they emptied the plates Jeongin’s mother had filled with pastries and baked goods, as well as the bottles of wine Changbin had brought for good measure.

Late at night, the celebration had toned down a bit, and the room had fallen silent. Jeongin and Felix had dozed off near the fireplace, huddled on the carpet Minho had laid out for them, while Changbin and Seungmin were sitting at the table playing checkers. Judging from what Minho was able to see from where he was sitting, Seungmin was about to win, as he always did. Hyunjin was sitting cozily on the rocking chair, his fingers tangled in Jisung’s hair, who was sitting on the floor and had laid his head on Hyunjin’s thighs, just like Minho used to do with his grandmother, and was gazing at Hyunjin with his eyes full of wonder. Minho looked at them and smiled. He was feeling sleepy but, at the same time, he was feeling merely and absolutely content. He let his thoughts linger on the memories of his grandmother, of his _juju_ , as he looked at Hyunjin caress Jisung’s head with his gracious hands, and his heart was at peace. He could almost feel she was there with them, right next to him as she had always been, as she was going to always be.

And as though he had set foot in a dimension that belonged to another realm, built upon dreamlike states and otherworldly fantasies, he finally laid his eyes on Chan, who was sitting on the stairs and was staring at him with a smile so beautifully tender, and an affection so undoubtedly real, and he felt so happy he was sure his destiny was finally unfolding before his very eyes.

And so, as he stared back at him, he was sure he could finally look forward to the future, for he knew they had a long path ahead of them and they were going to walk it together, and their love was only waiting for them to take the first step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end~  
> This story has been really important to me, for a lot of different reasons, and I’m really happy I’ve had the opportunity to share it with you. I’ve learned a lot in the process, so I’m really grateful. Thank you so, so much for reading, I’m sincerely thankful to anyone who has stopped by ♡
> 
> If you need someone to talk to, or you just want to say hi, you can find me on tumblr @yellowbuttercupblr!  
> I’m already working on something else, so I hope I’ll see you all soon! In the meantime, please stay safe!


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